Despite being a distinctive workplace relationship, little research has focused on whether or not certain employees are more prone to forming a work–spouse relationship and the organizational outcomes associated with them. Guided by theorizing on self-monitoring and affective organizational commitment, we analyzed data from 439 employees—167 (38.0%) who currently have, 111 (25.3%) who previously had, and 161 (36.7%) who have never had a work spouse—to examine the influence of self-monitoring on an employee’s propensity to develop a work–spouse relationship and explore the association between having a work spouse and affective organizational commitment. Our findings indicated that the development of a work–spouse relationship was independent of employees’ (a) sexuality, (b) romantic relationship status, and (c) nationality. With regard to self-monitoring, while our initial findings indicated that higher self-monitors were more likely to report having never formed a work–spouse relationship, this relationship was no longer significant when controlling for gender. Last, individuals currently in a work–spouse relationship reported greater affective organizational commitment than individuals who were not. Overall, the findings from this study provide a foundation for future research on the work–spouse relationship and have implications for managers as they try to better understand this unique relationship.

尽管存在独特的工作场所关系，但很少有研究集中在某些员工是否更倾向于形成工作与配偶的关系以及与之相关的组织成果上。通过对自我监控和有效的组织承诺进行理论化指导，我们分析了439名员工的数据-167名员工（38.0％），目前有111名（25.3％），以前有161名（36.7％）从未有过工作配偶—检验自我监控对员工发展工作与配偶关系的倾向的影响，并探讨拥有工作配偶与情感组织承诺之间的联系。我们的发现表明，工作与配偶关系的发展与雇员的（a）性，（b）恋爱关系状态和（c）国籍无关。从来没有形成工作与配偶的关系，在控制性别时这种关系不再重要。最后，目前处于工作与配偶关系中的个人所报告的情感组织承诺要高于没有工作与个人关系的个人。总体而言，这项研究的结果为未来工作与配偶关系的研究奠定了基础，并且对管理人员在试图更好地理解这种独特关系方面具有启示意义。