Human relations in organizations?

In the following chapter the term “colleagues” has two meanings:

1. (1) those people who occupy different hierarchical levels in a work organization but share the same rank, although they may have nothing to do with one another in both senses of the phrase (all workers; all foremen/women; all those in higher managerial positions). Together these different bodies of colleagues form the (work) collective or personnel.

2. (2) those people of similar rank who work together in a clearly perceptible work unit and who share direct interpersonal relationships.

Both of these perspectives will be used here to elucidate characteristic features of “relationships between colleagues.”

Being a colleague, female or male, is a social classification. It does not denote an individual accomplishment on the part of a specific person; it is a prescribed role that is accepted and either formed individually or negotiated. Classifications are “prescribed” in two ways: on the one hand they are prefabricated descriptions (prefabricated both in terms of time and form, i.e., generalized and stereotyped); on the other hand they are prescriptions that function as valid premises for actions and decisions in a particular context. Classification gains its regulating power from this dual definition as a norm, which unites the usual with the demanded. It shapes expectations and mutual expectations: thus, if a woman sees herself in a classified relationship to another person – for instance another female colleague – she will expect the other to have specific legitimate expectations of her.