One of the articles that contributed to such 21st century discussions was Broom, Casey, and Ritchey’s (1997) call for a working definition of relationships that allows “the development of valid operational measures” of OPR “with measurable properties distinct from their antecedents and consequences and independent of the parties in the relationships” (p. 83). The last part of that observation is particularly important because it calls for a theoretical contextualization of relationship as a concept, one that is defined by the variables relevant to antecedent conditions, to the nature and quality of relationships as such, and to outcomes both positive and negative based on the quality of relationships. The paradigm for such analysis was increasingly been based on speech communication studies in interpersonal communication. In that tradition, relationship quality is a central problematic of the human condition, in many contexts such as friendships, marriages, superior–subordinate exchanges, and even between organizations and customers as well as other stakeholders.