Creating Sustainable Workplace Environments: An Exploratory Study of Social Energy Expenditure in Cross-Sex, Heterosexual Organizational Friendships

Abstract

This thesis outlines the reasoning and methods used to investigate the concept of social energy expenditure from Hall and Davis' (2017) communicate bond belong (CBB) theory as a lens for understanding how individuals invest social energy into forming and maintaining crosssex, heterosexual friendships in organizations. Informed by previous literature, this study explores the intersect between interpersonal communication and organizational communication.Apart from Hall (2018), no other scholars have tested the 2017 CBB theory. Therefore, the present study's goal is to provide a foundational inquiry into the theory's usability by applying the core concept of social energy expenditure and by specifically testing theorem 5b from principle 5 (i.e., the principle of human energy investment). The testing of CBB, as a new theory, adds a valuable contribution to the field of communication.