Legal Issues

Okay, this is embarrassing. I read halfway through a study intending to blog on it, finding it interesting but also trying to recall a similar study it reminded me of. Suspicions grew. I checked Teams Blog, and sure enough: I’d wasted 30 minutes re-reading a study I blogged about in September.

The confluence of a recent news story and journal article has demonstrated a reason beyond morality or ethics or law for protecting the protected classes as a manager. If for no other reason, do it to protect yourself.

I once shocked a manager by telling her I thought she had rated me too highly in an annual performance review. I don't recall the details anymore, just the stunned look on her face. Some mistake I had made during the year, though I had identified and corrected it at the time, made me feel that my colleagues had done a better job on one measure. Almost everybody got a 3 on almost everything, so a 3 seemed unfair. When I self-rated, I gave myself a 2. I ended up with a 3 anyway.

In another example of people relearning a well-established truth the hard way, plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court case this week found out they could not use their work pagers for "sexting." More to the point of this blog, I hope their managers learned a similar message: don't tell people they have rights they don't actually have.

To both sides I say, "Duh."

If you would like to have a hard-working, loyal team member, consider hiring an ex-criminal. At the very least, it may keep you out of trouble.

Two studies on lawsuits against businesses caught my eye recently. For one, business researchers used public records to determine how many lawsuits were filed against companies before and after mergers through acquisition, and how many of those suits got to the point of a court making a judgment that the firm did something wrong (not related to the merger). They looked at 576 U.S. firms acquired in 1987, including public and private firms and both foreign and U.S. buyers.

After all the U.S. media focus on schoolyard bullies in recent years, I'm glad to see a growing awareness of what those playground pugilists may grow up to be: abusive bosses. Prof. David Yamada and a growing chorus of researchers are out to change that by making workplace emotional abuse illegal in the Unites States. Among a host of other good reasons, Yamada wants to save lives.

I just finished reading a horror story, made all the worse because it is a true story involving failure to protect nuclear weapons secrets, lost management—and indirectly, me.