Complaint and Friendship
Abstract
Friendship in the workplace is alternately approached as a resource to be leveraged or a liability to be managed. In leadership development, where practitioners carefully cultivate their subjectivities, appearing adequately self-aware and open-minded is valued highly. How do leadership development practitioners’ use of complaints in their workplace, in ways both formal and informal, serve as an affordance for friendship? Considering this example raises questions about what it means to make friendship useful at work and in other contexts, and it suggests that separating the “goods” of friendship from the “bads” is a misleading and problematic endeavor.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Leadership and Management in Organizations
Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
Innovative Education and Learning Practices
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Pages
- 60–77
- Publication date
- 27 February 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Book chapter