2. Roles and Relationships.

2. Roles and Relationships. When you join a group or an organization, you take on a
role. In social sciences,
„role‟ means „the appropriate pattern of behavior in a certain social context.‟
These patterns of behavior are things we have to learn to be accepted. We spend our
entire lives adapting to new circumstances and often multiple roles we find ourselves
in (child, parent, student, teacher, professional, superior, subordinate, etc.).
All groups have a set of role expectations, i.e. behavior patterns generally considered
appropriate in a particular context. These may vary widely (compare school rules in
PNG with those in Afghanistan, or the United States!).
Roles are bound up with relationships. You play a role in a context which includes
other people. You cannot be a son or a daughter without parents: you are a student in
relation to a teacher, etc.
Our roles at work are complementary to those of others. The larger the organization
in which you work, the more complicated the pattern of roles becomes. However,
there are 4 main role situations:
 You work for other people (subordinate role)
 You work with other people (equal, or peer role)
 Other people work for you (authority role)
 You represent the organization to outsiders
This „overlapping‟ of roles is a potential source of conflict, as it often leads to a clash of
interests. Each individual may at the same time be engaged in a number of different
relationships, each with its own demands and responsibilities.
All these varying ( and sometimes conflicting) roles affect the process of communication,
its manner, tone and content. People tend to :
 Expect others to communicate with them in a manner appropriate to a perceived
relationship between them („Of course he didn‟t say anything: he‟s the boss‟)
 Expect others to share the same perception of the relationship („He spoke right
back to me: what cheek!‟)
 Be more formal and less open with superiors
 Be restrained with subordinates also, to preserve a position of formal authority
 Be more open and familiar with peers or equals