Interesting article on this topic in the NYT last week.

Some highlights:

THE office joker. The mother hen. The king. The rebel. The gossip. The peacekeeper. The dude.

Anyone who has ever been part of a workplace culture can probably recognize at least one of those characters in the cubicle next door.

But workplace roles and the dynamics among colleagues can go much deeper than those somewhat superficial stereotypes, especially in a nation where many people spend as much time with colleagues as they do with their families, where the office so often mirrors the family.

A boss is not just a boss, in the view of some psychologists who study workplace roles; he can be a stand-in for a disapproving and distant father. An unpredictable, easily angered manager can be a thinly veiled rejecting mother. Colleagues competing for the boss’s attention — or merit raises and bonuses — are siblings in rivalry . . . .

Given all the stress and uncertainty driven by the economic crisis, some companies, with the help of business and organizational psychologists, are plumbing the depths of these feelings and roles, trying to gauge their effects at a time when emotions are running high. A growing number of business psychologists and executive coaches are also looking at the influence of birth order and other family roles and niches on office behavior.

“Work is nothing more than an entirely complex set of relationships,” said Michael W. Norris, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, who runs monthly leadership coaching groups and individual sessions with senior executives. “You have partners that are your equals, subordinates, superiors,” Mr. Norris said. “It’s parents and siblings. All of these dynamics that are exactly the same in the workplace, just the titles are different.”

Interesting thesis and god knows that I know plenty of the aforementioned characters in my various workplaces over the years (and lord knows I don’t qualify as any of them!).  I’d be interested in knowing in the comments whether blog readers think there is a nice symmetrical relationship between work and family roles as the article suggests.

I, for one, am far nicer at work . . . .

Cross posted at Workplace Prof Blog.