Love Culture: What It Takes to Create a Happy Workplace

Knowledge@Wharton:

Knowledge@Wharton: Your study focused on an interesting environment, which was firehouses and firemen. Why did you pick firemen? What you were looking at, and what you were trying to find?

Nancy Rothbard: Mandy and I really wanted to go in and understand how the emotional culture of an organization could affect how people both interact in the workplace, but also what the effects on them physiologically might be. We were really interested in looking at emotional culture, in particular the culture of love, as well as another particular type of culture that often emerges in organizations, especially masculine organizations, which is called “culture of joviality.” A culture of joviality is sort of the fun, the joking, the pranks, kind of a macho, back slapping, teasing type of a culture. A culture of companionate love is really one where there is a sense of compassion, caring and affection for one another.

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