The Bridging the gap between romantic Incubator relationships and sexual harassment in organizations CHARLES A. PIERCE Department of Psychology, Montana State University, Bozeman, U.S.A. AND HERMAN AGUINIS Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Denver, Denver, U.S.A. Summary Workplace romances and sexual harassment are pervasive in today's organizations. However, despite the fact that these two phenomena share a social-sexual component, they have primarily been treated as unrelated organizational issues. We advance an aective link between workplace romances and sexual harassment. Based on this theoretical connection, we discuss conditions under which workplace romances may result in sexual harassment. Finally, we address managerial implications of the romance±harassment link. # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 18: 197±200 (1997) No. of Figures: 0 No. of Tables: 0 No. of References: 13 Introduction Researchers in organizational behavior, industrial/organizational and social psychology, and communication have for the past 20 years been interested in examining two types of social-sexual behavior that are still pervasive in organizations. Speci®cally, workplace romances, or mutually desired romantic relationships between two members of the same organization, continue to be rampant (Dillard, Hale and Segrin, 1994). It is also well known that sexual harassment in the workplace, or unwelcome sexual conduct directed toward an organizational member, continues to be a problem plaguing organizations (Gutek, 1985; Pryor and McKinney, 1995). Substantively, workplace romances and sexual harassment share an important character- isticÐthey both entail a sexual component between two employees (Powell, 1993). However, in our recent development of a theoretical model of workplace romance (Pierce, Byrne and Aguinis, Addressee for correspondence: Charles A. Pierce, Department of Psychology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717-0344, U.S.A.; e-mail may be sent via Internet to CAPIERCE@MONTANA.EDU. Tel: (406) 994-2899; fax: (406) 994-3804; World Wide Web: HTTP://WWW.MONTANA.EDU/WWWPY/CPPAGE.HTML Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Society, San Francisco, CA, June 1996. CCC 0894±3796/97/030197±04 $17.50 # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 21 May 1996 JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, VOL. 18, 197±200 (1997)