【时间】2026年03月27日14:00-15:30（北京时间）

【主题】When Men Grieve: How Grief Unfreezes Masculine Norms and Reshapes Workplace Social Support Networks

【主讲人】钟瑞洁（利兹大学商学院讲师）

【地点】新太阳学生中心210

摘要

Workplace social support is essential for helping employees navigate strain, yet men generally maintain sparser and less emotionally expressive support networks than women due to masculine norms that discourage vulnerability. What, then, do men do when they experience grief? We theorize and show that the answer depends critically on the domain of the stressor. We propose that grief induced by life-domain events (e.g., death of close others or major health loss) functions as a masculine norm–unfreezing trigger: because such uncontrollable events do not threaten competence—the core of masculine identity—they legitimize help-seeking and heighten perceived relational deficits, allowing men to build workplace social support ties in ways they ordinarily avoid. By contrast, work-domain stressors directly challenge competence and thus reinforce masculine self‑sufficiency norms, prompting men to withdraw from rather than expand workplace support. Using three‑wave social network panel data on 916 individuals over 36 months, we find that, following life-domain grief events, men expand—and maintain over time—their workplace social support networks, including confidant, emergency help, and practical assistance ties, and report greater social wellbeing from this expansion. Women, who possess more robust baseline networks, show little structural change. Conversely, men facing work-domain stressors contract their networks and derive no additional satisfaction from support expansion. These findings position grief as a gendered identity shock that reorganizes workplace relationships and reveal when and why men turn to the workplace for support.