CORPORATE RELATIONSHIPS go beyond job descriptions, reporting lines, and organization charts. Other ties outside the formal structure can affect behavior and decision-making. These include social links that involve family and other social bonds.
One category of social connections involves “ritual kinship.” These links include religious or civil ties, like serving as godparents for weddings, baptisms, or confirmations. This rite connects parents, godparents, and godchildren in an informal social link. Such rituals may also include fraternities and secret societies, with their own greeting signs.
Friendships fall under a looser category of social connection. It can be fostered by common interests (like oenology or bowling), a common background (like graduating from the same schools), or simply a mutual enjoyment of each other’s company, when fully clothed.
Do social bonds affect the contractual obligations of business? Good friends may have had parallel careers in different companies or countries and get together frequently for lunches and even travel together with their families. But what if in an acquisition, merger, or re-assignment the erstwhile social friends find themselves in a boss-and-subordinate situation?
Can a friend be an effective boss? And the flip side — is a friend likely to be an ideal subordinate?
Friendship is a loose relationship. There is no fixed set of obligations. (Must confide latest amorous interest as soon as reciprocated.) There are no established rules, like frequency of meetings or minutes. A claimed friendship need not be reciprocated or even recognized.
The image of the boss (what the public knows from his official CV) may be eroded by what a close friend is privy to. Are such intimate details to be allowed at pre-meeting small talk? Intimacy is claimed with private reminiscences to prove ties of friendship — we used to take the bus to school.
Who are your real friends? Even a gift list for Christmas or invitees to social functions are not conclusive. They include obligatory ties to business associates, relatives, and friends of spouses who are not necessarily close friends.
The higher a person goes up the social ladder, the greater the number of acquaintances claiming friendship, even a close one. The declared relationship is often asymmetrical, with the higher social status needing to certify a claimed intimacy — I haven’t seen him in ages.
There are also degrees of friendship. There is a close friend (He visits us frequently for Christmas Eve dinner), an acquaintance (gets the name of your latest partner correctly), a best friend (Someone you don’t have to talk with if you feel like keeping quiet), or casual buddy (Last seen 20 years ago at a school reunion). The ties that bind differ — a classmate in school or neighbor when growing up, part of a small circle of cyclists traveling together for out-of-town jaunts, or locked down together in a cruise during the pandemic.
Friendship is not constant, as a best friend from school may evolve into a mere close friend as intervening events and other associations bring other friends closer, pushing down those previously on top. They may even still be on the Christmas gift list.
Sometimes, it’s only at wakes that the aha moment descends — I didn’t realize you were close to her.
Friendship is revealed by generosity. Time and help are given not out of expectation of rewards or reciprocity, but merely to make someone happy and at peace. There are no hidden agenda or selfish interests at work here.
Because its basis is undefined and changeable, friendship is seldom stable. There are few friends for life, except perhaps when they lose touch with each other for a long time. Situations change. And the equality of opinion and status can shift the balance in favor of one over another.
A corporate relationship is defined by rules and expectations and an annual evaluation of performance. In terms of expectations, it’s difficult to navigate between the corporate and the personal realms. And this is not at all about intimate ties at the workplace. (That’s another type of connection altogether.)
Since there is no formal roster of friends, not even in the mind. It is difficult to establish acceptance (or exile) in such an ambiguous relationship. Only the answer to a direct question will settle the issue — is he really a friend of yours? A nod will do… or even a shrug.
Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda
Friends as bosses
Philippines Pandemic
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