ICPR Abstracts: Session 8

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Session 8: Panel

Relationships Between Service Providers and Recipients:  
Why Researchers Interested in Personal Relationships 
Should Care About Changes in Commercial 
Transactions

Barbara Gutek, University of Arizona
Virginia O'Leary, Auburn University
Daniel Perlman, University of British Columbia

One form of "relationship" that has traditionally not been 
considered by researchers interested in the subject, is a 
transaction relationship, i.e., between a provider of goods 
and services and a recipient, customer, or consumer of 
those goods or services.  We define a relationship as 
occurring when a service provider, say, a professor, 
physician, therapist, hairstylist or auto mechanic interacts 
with a set of customers, the two people anticipate future 
interaction, and over time the dyad builds up a shared 
history of interaction that they can draw upon in each 
subsequent interaction (Gutek, 1995, chapters 1 & 2).  
While these relationships, between a stockbroker and 
customer, physician and patient, housekeeper and 
homeowner, secretary and boss, are not a substitute for 
more intimate relationships, they do serve a variety of 
expressive as well as instrumental needs of both 
participants to the relationship.  Transaction relationships 
provide weak ties (in comparison to the strong ties 
provided by family, friendship, and romantic relationships) 
that enrich the lives of the participants, meet specific 
needs in the area of the transactions, and more generally 
embed both parties in a rich social network. Relationships 
provide a set of contacts and referrals for both providers 
and recipients.  Friendships and other, more intimate 
relationships can grow out of transaction relationships.
        Our proposed panel discussion focuses on these 
transaction relationships and their characteristics, the topic 
of a recent book by one of the participants.  We will argue 
that transaction relationships are being supplemented and 
perhaps replaced by transaction "encounters" in which a 
therapist, physician, insurance clerk, or hairstylist and 
their customers, patients or clients are strangers to each 
other.  We will provide information about relationships 
and encounters, give examples from psychotherapy and 
higher education, discuss the role of the family in 
maintaining the equilibrium of those increasingly involved 
in transactional encounters, and discuss some applications 
of this perspective to the study of personal relationships.