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This study applies complexity theory to propose and empirically examine asymmetric case conditions of antecedents and outcome models of high (low) willingness-to-engage in workplace romance (WEWR). This study focuses on constructing complex antecedent conditions that accurately indicate which employees, and under what conditions, employees are high in WEWR.

Using an experimental design, 162 employees were assigned one of nine hypothetical vignettes describing different workplace romance contexts including three discrete policies regarding workplace romances (i.e. strictly forbidden, moderate, vs no policy), two motivations for the workplace romance (i.e. job vs love), and two organizational positions of the romance (i.e. hierarchical vs lateral). Participants then reported WEWR responses. Participants also provided demographic, behavioral, and psychological work-related information. This study assesses and supports recipes (i.e. algorithms) of case and organizational structure conditions to identify cases high (low) in WEWR accurately and consistently.

The results provide clarity of which and when employees are willing vs unwilling to engage in workplace romances – and the contextualized impacts of organizational bans on WEWR. The study’s results are useful for estimating for whom specific workplace policies are effective or not by specific workplace contexts.

In highlighting the role of varying antecedent conditions in predicting WEWR, this research will assist organizations and practitioners in understanding the context in which workplace romances are more likely to occur, providing insight as to when employees are likely to comply with workplace romance policies.

This paper is the first in the workplace romance literature to examine unique combinations of antecedent conditions on WEWR, adding nuance to the current understanding of the behavior.

This paper examines the corporate policies on workplace relationships in the insurance industry. It consists of identifying whether the 48 insurance companies found in the Fortune 500 have any policies that restrict employees from dating each other within their organization and if so, what were these restrictions. In addition, 235 employees in the insurance field were surveyed to determine their perceptions of the positive and/or negative effects of romantic relationships had in their workplace environment. These results were examined from a Platonic perspective with a recommendation for a code of ethics developed from policies existing in other insurance companies and suggested by the current literature.

This chapter explores factors presented in romance novels that reify gendered assumptions of masculinity and femininity to present readers with narratives that serve as powerful agents of socialization.

We conducted directed content analyses of over 180 mass-market romance novels published by Harlequin and Silhouette over an approximate 30-year period to ascertain common themes regarding gender polarization and gender schematicity in the maintenance of family and work.

Our review of this literature illuminates the assumption of “naturalized” gender roles for men and women in the construction and maintenance of marriage and the family, calling attention to the ways in which we remain constrained to polarized gender roles in the depiction of romantic encounters.

This study is limited to romance novels published prior to 2006, although we see replications of gender schematic narrative in current romance narratives featuring paranormal encounters (Twilight) and erotica (Fifty Shades of Grey).

This paper aims to systematically review over two decades of academic articles on romance fraud to provide a holistic insight into this crime and identify literature gaps.

More than two decades of peer-reviewed academic journal articles from 2000 to 2023 were systematically reviewed using multiple search engines and databases for relevant papers, identified through searches of paper titles, keywords, abstracts and primary texts.

The findings reveal 10 themes: i) the definitions and terminology of romance fraud; ii) romance fraud’s impact on victims; iii) the profile of romance fraud criminals and victims; iv) romance fraud methods and techniques; v) why victims become susceptible to romance fraud; vi) the psychology of romance fraud criminals; vii) the links between romance fraud and other crimes; viii) the challenges of investigating romance fraud; ix) preventing romance fraud and protecting victims; and x) how romance fraud victims can be supported.

The paper reveals implications regarding the future direction of policy and strategy to address the pervasive low reporting rates and narratives of shame bound with victims of this crime.

Romance fraud is a serious crime against individuals with impacts beyond financial losses. Still, this fraud type is under-researched, and the literature lacks a holistic view of this crime. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic literature review providing a holistic view of romance fraud. It combines evidence across the academic landscape to reveal the breadth and depth of the current work concerning romance fraud and identify gaps in the understanding of this fraud crime.

Extant research on workplace ostracism has investigated a victimization perspective to understand ostracism at the cost of examining the perpetrator-centric view of ostracism. This study aims to draw on the self-categorization theory and the social exchange theory to investigate the harmful effects of workplace romance in cultivating workplace ostracism from the perspective of perpetrator to combat concerns for victim blaming. This study further proposes that workplace ostracism triggered by workplace romance provokes interpersonal conflict. Besides, this study investigates the moderating role of prosocial behavior in the underlying linkages.

This study uses a multisource, time-lagged research design to collect data from employees working in the service sector organizations in Pakistan. This study analyzes 367 responses using SmartPLS (v 4.0).

The findings of this study reveal that workplace romance elicits workplace ostracism, which, in turn, fosters interpersonal conflict among coworkers. In addition, this study finds that ingroup prosocial behavior strengthens the associations between workplace romance and workplace ostracism, and workplace romance and interpersonal conflict, mediated by workplace ostracism such that the associations are more potent at higher levels of ingroup prosocial behavior and vice versa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines workplace romance as the perpetrator-centric antecedent of workplace ostracism, and ingroup prosocial behavior in exaggerating the outgroup ostracism and interpersonal conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate whether employee attitudes, prior engagement in workplace romances, conscientiousness, and organizational policies predicted the willingness to engage in workplace romances.

In total, 148 full-time employees completed an online survey measuring antecedents of workplace romances. Participants were also randomly assigned to read vignettes that varied the strictness of organizational workplace romance policies. Then, participants completed measures of their willingness to engage in a workplace romance.

Favorable attitudes about, and prior engagement in, workplace romances were positively related to the willingness to engage in a workplace romance. Prior engagement in workplace romances and conscientiousness were both related to attitudes about workplace romances. Additionally, the interaction between conscientiousness and organizational workplace romance policies significantly predicted the willingness to engage in a workplace romance.

The current study used hypothetical scenarios and a convenience sample to collect data, which may affect the study’s external validity.

Organizations grappling with the issue of workplace romances should consider how employee characteristics may interact with policies regulating workplace romances.

This study is the first to examine the links between both prior engagement in workplace romances and personality variables (i.e. conscientiousness) and their relation to the willingness to engage in workplace romances. In addition, this is the first experimental study to examine the interaction between personality (i.e. conscientiousness) and organizational policy in predicting the willingness to engage workplace romances.

Research illustrates that workplace romance is on the rise and has potentially negative and beneficial consequences. The purpose of this paper is to understand, from an individual manager and employee perspective in the UK and USA, what personal experience individuals had on workplace romance and what this meant to them personally and in terms of company policy.

A thematic analysis approach was taken to understand what experiences individuals had on workplace romance and how this experience should be reflected in company policy. The research utilised qualitative interviews which were preferred over other methods, such as focus groups by the participants. These interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded to formulate themes in the research.

The sample consists of 21 employees and 15 managers from Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania and England. Regardless of whether participants were from the USA or England, their opinions were similar. Managers and entry level employees feel that workplace romance was acceptable if it has minimal impact on the workplace. Managers and entry level employees are most concerned with the negative impacts of workplace romance on the atmosphere of the workplace, more so than the risk of sexual harassment lawsuits. Managers and entry level employees agree on the importance of companies having a policy on how workplace romance will be handled.

Both managers and employees stress that company policy should not place a complete ban on workplace romance; that workplace romances should be handled on a case by case basis.

The paper adds to existing research by comparing managers' and entry level employees' perceptions of consensual romantic relationships between people who work for the same organisation.

This research aims to explain consumer attraction to brands when stimulation needs are paramount using the perspective of the Self‐Expansion Model. In doing so, it seeks to identiy brand romance – a more proximal construct to brand loyalty and aims to offer a complementary perspective to understand emotional attachment to brands.

A series of four studies developed and validated a three‐factor, 12‐item measurement scale for brand romance using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Reliability, convergent, criterion, discriminant and nomological validities were established.

Brand romance is a reliable, valid, and a more proximal construct that explains loyalty significantly better than attitudes.

Student subjects constitute the sample and the findings are cautiously generalizable to adult populations. Future research should focus on teasing out product category effects, extending generalizability to other product categories and integrating the Attachment Theory perspective with the study's findings to offer a more comprehensive explanation for loyalty.

Consumers are likely to remain loyal to brands to which they are attracted. The brand romance construct captures this attraction. Marketers need to infuse their brands with novel perspectives, resources and identities on a continuous basis to satisfy stimulation needs and keep the attraction strong. This involves creating new brand associations that help the brand to stay relevant.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to apply the Self‐expansion Model to brand relationships. The research contributes a unique perspective in explaining emotional attachment to brands brought on by stimulation needs. It fills a gap in the emotional attachment literature and provides marketers with a tool to monitor consumers' attraction to brands.

We obtained questionnaire data from 465 employees to test a model containing hypothesized formation and impact factors from Pierce, Byrne, and Aguinis’s (1996) conceptual model of workplace romance. As predicted, results indicate that (a) employees’ attitudes toward romance and sexual intimacy at work and levels of perceived job autonomy are positively associated with their participation in a workplace romance; and (b) employees’ participation in a workplace romance is positively associated with their levels of job satisfaction and, to a lesser degree, organizational commitment. Employees’ participation in a workplace romance was not, however, predictive of their levels of job performance or intrinsic work motivation. We discuss implications for future workplace romance research.

The #MeToo movement has brought questions of sexuality and power in the workplace to the forefront. The purpose of this paper is to review the research on hierarchial consensual workplace romances and sexual harassment examining the underlying mechanisms of power relations. It concludes with a call to action for organizational leaders to adopt fair consensual workplace romance policies alongside strong sexual harassment policies.

This paper represents a conceptual review of the literature on consensual workplace romance, sexual harassment, passive leadership and power relations. Passive leadership leads to a climate of incivility that in turn suppresses disclosures of sexual harassment (Lee, 2016). Consensual workplace romances across hierarchical power relations carry significant risks and may turn into harassment should the romance turn sour.

Two new concepts, sexual hubris and sexploitation, are defined in this paper. Sexual hubris, defined as an opportunistic mindset that allows the powerful to abuse their power to acquire sexual liaisons, and its opposite, sexploitation, defined as a lower-status member using sexuality to gain advantage and favor from an upper-level power target, are dual opportunistic outcomes of an imbalanced power relation. Sexual hubris may increase the likelihood for sexual harassment such that a mindset occurs on the part of the dominant coalition that results in feelings of entitlement. Sexploitation is a micromanipulation tactic designed to create sexual favoritism that excludes others from the power relation.

Sexual hubris and sexploitation are conceptualized as an opportunistic mechanisms associated with imbalanced power relations to spur future research to tease out complex issues of gender, sexuality and hierarchy in the workplace. Sexual hubris serves to protect the dominant coalition and shapes organizational norms of a climate of oppression and incivility. Conversely, sexploitation is a micromanipulation tactic that allows a lower-status member to receive favoritism from a higher-power target. Four research propositions on sexual hubris and sexploitation are presented for future scholarship.

Most organizational leaders believe consensual romance in the office cannot be legislated owing to privacy concerns. Passive leadership is discussed as a leadership style that looks the other way and does not intervene, leading to workplace hostility and incivility (Lee, 2016). Inadequate leadership creates a climate of passivity that in turn silences victims. Policies concerning consensual workplace romance should stand alongside sexual harassment policies regardless of privacy concerns.

The #MeToo movement has allowed victims to disclose sexual misconduct and abuse in the workplace. However, the prevalence of sexual harassment claims most often can be traced to a leadership problem. Employers must recognize that sexual hubris and sexploitation arise from imbalances of power, where sex can be traded for advancement, and that often consensual workplace romances end badly, leading to claims of sexual harassment. Consensual romance policies must stand alongside sexual harassment policies.

Sexual hubris and sexploitation are offered as novel concepts that provide a mechanism for conceptualizing the potential for abuse and manipulation from unbalanced power relations. These are original concepts derived from the arguments within this paper that help make the case for consensual workplace romance policies alongside sexual harassment policies.