ABSTRACT
Human relationships are crucially important in work situations, especially among managers. This chapter presents a brief overview of the existing literature on working relationships and describes their characteristic development and the ways in which they are similar to or different from social and intimate personal relationships more generally. While working relationships develop over time, they are less adequately characterized by stage paradigms than are intimate relationships. Because working relationships generally exist to accomplish tasks while social relationships are not, task achievement, task instrumentality and task-specific competence are especially important in work relationships, while affect and self-disclosure are less important. The chapter concludes with methodological and substantive implications for research
