Sociability Between Coworkers and Social Fit at Work

Abstract

Social interactions vary across workplaces, in part because workers and managers treat informal social interactions as a facet of workplace cultures, encouraging it in some instances and suppressing it in others. Equally, such interactions are consequential for social capital, and may be a dimension of cultural fit. Thus processes of status attainment and resource allocation may vary across workplaces in concert with their sociability. Using a new measure of time spent with coworkers, constructed using the American Time Use Survey, this paper shows that work explains a great deal more variation in sociability between coworkers than individual characteristics. The extent of shared workplace identities, influenced by occupational competition levels and union membership, and incentives to socialize are two important mechanisms in this process. Moreover, norms and expectations of appropriate behavior in the workplace accompany occupational differences in sociability, and matching these expectations is consequential for workers' earnings.