hops
September 3, 2003, 04:42 PM
This clowns line of thought could lead to some frightening implications for law abiding firearms owners who are not self-employed.
WSJ Sept. 3, 2003
BUSINESS WORLD
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
How to Stop the Killing
Not a month before workplace shootings by a known racist had killed six coworkers at an aerospace plant in Georgia last July, Harvard Business Review ran a thought experiment entitled "Do Something -- He's About to Snap." It concerned a hypothetical company with a hypothetical employee who made other employees nervous.
A bunch of nonhypothetical experts were recruited to comment. They pointed out that office paranoia is more likely to push someone over the edge than prevent a crime; also that companies can save themselves a lot of grief by taking more care over whom they hire in the first place and by establishing a strong expectation of workplace civility. If every middle-aged white man with a chip on his shoulder were treated as a potential shooter, business in America would grind to a halt.
Indeed, your chances of getting mowed down by an irate coworker are still less than getting hit by lightning, though greater than getting munched by a shark. Of the 800 or so workplace homicides a year, fewer than 100 are committed by coworkers. HBR's purpose was not to sound the alarm about potential murderers in our midst but to illustrate how morale and productivity are undermined by unrealistic and exaggerated suspicion.
In one way, however, such answers are unsatisfying.
To an employer, one malcontent who goes on a rampage may be indistinguishable beforehand from the dozens who don't. But the information that spills out in the aftermath of such incidents suggests a different a story. Experts say most workplace massacres are preceded by clear warning signs. Employees don't just snap -- they've been nursing grievances and elaborating theories about how they've been wronged for a period of time. And they don't keep their feelings a secret. Patterns of thinking and behavior were there for anyone to see -- provided someone was paying attention.
Psychologists have made a professional touchstone out of insisting it's impossible to predict who will commit violence, but this is more fetish than useful fact. In truth, reasonable judgments are possible about who might pose a risk when presented with a triggering event, such as a firing or demotion or other setback.
Wakefield, Mass. was the site of seven killings at Edgewater Technology by a deranged employee on Dec. 26, 2000. Out of that experience grew a state-funded initiative with the local police department and Northeastern University.
One example described publicly by the department's chief, Stephen Doherty, involved a large company on the verge of carrying out sizeable layoffs. It identified 10 employees to be handled with extra care. The police checked their own files and narrowed down the worrisome cases to four based on arrest records or gun registrations.
The firings were carried out in a single day, with the four high-priority cases going first. On the day of the layoffs and for several weeks after, the company advertised that law enforcement would maintain a discreet presence to protect employees and make sure things went smoothly. (Workplace killers look to carry out their executions unopposed. They aren't seeking battle with armed police.)
As this experiment in cooperation between cops and business suggests, information sharing is the key. Salvador Tapia, who killed six former coworkers at a Chicago warehouse last Wednesday, had been convicted twice, on a drunk-driving charge and for unlawful possession of a gun. He'd also been arrested at least a dozen times for aggravated assault, domestic battery and for threatening his girlfriend or family members with a handgun.
For years now companies have been hectored to perform serious background checks on employees. Anyone who behaved violently in the past must be considered a reasonable bet to behave violently in the future. But Tapia's history of waving a gun in people's faces had not led to convictions because the victims had declined to press charges. His record of arrests (and pronounced pattern of behavior) was familiar to police but not to potential employers thanks to privacy rules.
To put a fine point on it, isn't there a hole in our legal process when a serial threatener can carry on without some warning being shared with those most likely to find themselves in his way?
Readers may remember the case of Michael Stone, a British psychopath. Stone had been arrested numerous times and diagnosed as suffering a "severe personality disorder," but had been returned to the streets because psychiatrists deemed his condition "untreatable."
This history spilled into public view after he was charged with the murder of a woman and her young daughter. Public outrage was manifest in the tabloids. The Blair government responded by proposing a new law to allow people with "dangerous and severe personality disorder" (DSPD) to be held involuntarily for treatment as a protection to the public.
Three years later, the bill remains stalled by civil libertarians and mental-health advocates who complain it would stigmatize the mentally ill and allow the state to lock away people based on the say-so of psychiatrists. A happier outcome, though, has been a public inundated with discussion of the patterns that psychiatrists see in such people -- their indifference to rules and to the feelings and welfare of others, their remorselessness, paranoia and impulsivity.
The commentators in the Harvard case study are surely correct that it takes a finer degree of judgment than just noticing that somebody is "weird" or "antisocial" before it's worth deeming him a threat. But why should we assume such a finer degree of judgment is somehow beyond sophisticated business people?
An astute employer doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure out which employees are having trouble and might bear a closer look. One workplace massacre after another has left good evidence in its wake that such episodes might have been prevented if information in the hands of police had simply been put together with information in the hands of employers.
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:holman.jenkins@wsj.com
Updated September 3, 2003
WSJ Sept. 3, 2003
BUSINESS WORLD
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
How to Stop the Killing
Not a month before workplace shootings by a known racist had killed six coworkers at an aerospace plant in Georgia last July, Harvard Business Review ran a thought experiment entitled "Do Something -- He's About to Snap." It concerned a hypothetical company with a hypothetical employee who made other employees nervous.
A bunch of nonhypothetical experts were recruited to comment. They pointed out that office paranoia is more likely to push someone over the edge than prevent a crime; also that companies can save themselves a lot of grief by taking more care over whom they hire in the first place and by establishing a strong expectation of workplace civility. If every middle-aged white man with a chip on his shoulder were treated as a potential shooter, business in America would grind to a halt.
Indeed, your chances of getting mowed down by an irate coworker are still less than getting hit by lightning, though greater than getting munched by a shark. Of the 800 or so workplace homicides a year, fewer than 100 are committed by coworkers. HBR's purpose was not to sound the alarm about potential murderers in our midst but to illustrate how morale and productivity are undermined by unrealistic and exaggerated suspicion.
In one way, however, such answers are unsatisfying.
To an employer, one malcontent who goes on a rampage may be indistinguishable beforehand from the dozens who don't. But the information that spills out in the aftermath of such incidents suggests a different a story. Experts say most workplace massacres are preceded by clear warning signs. Employees don't just snap -- they've been nursing grievances and elaborating theories about how they've been wronged for a period of time. And they don't keep their feelings a secret. Patterns of thinking and behavior were there for anyone to see -- provided someone was paying attention.
Psychologists have made a professional touchstone out of insisting it's impossible to predict who will commit violence, but this is more fetish than useful fact. In truth, reasonable judgments are possible about who might pose a risk when presented with a triggering event, such as a firing or demotion or other setback.
Wakefield, Mass. was the site of seven killings at Edgewater Technology by a deranged employee on Dec. 26, 2000. Out of that experience grew a state-funded initiative with the local police department and Northeastern University.
One example described publicly by the department's chief, Stephen Doherty, involved a large company on the verge of carrying out sizeable layoffs. It identified 10 employees to be handled with extra care. The police checked their own files and narrowed down the worrisome cases to four based on arrest records or gun registrations.
The firings were carried out in a single day, with the four high-priority cases going first. On the day of the layoffs and for several weeks after, the company advertised that law enforcement would maintain a discreet presence to protect employees and make sure things went smoothly. (Workplace killers look to carry out their executions unopposed. They aren't seeking battle with armed police.)
As this experiment in cooperation between cops and business suggests, information sharing is the key. Salvador Tapia, who killed six former coworkers at a Chicago warehouse last Wednesday, had been convicted twice, on a drunk-driving charge and for unlawful possession of a gun. He'd also been arrested at least a dozen times for aggravated assault, domestic battery and for threatening his girlfriend or family members with a handgun.
For years now companies have been hectored to perform serious background checks on employees. Anyone who behaved violently in the past must be considered a reasonable bet to behave violently in the future. But Tapia's history of waving a gun in people's faces had not led to convictions because the victims had declined to press charges. His record of arrests (and pronounced pattern of behavior) was familiar to police but not to potential employers thanks to privacy rules.
To put a fine point on it, isn't there a hole in our legal process when a serial threatener can carry on without some warning being shared with those most likely to find themselves in his way?
Readers may remember the case of Michael Stone, a British psychopath. Stone had been arrested numerous times and diagnosed as suffering a "severe personality disorder," but had been returned to the streets because psychiatrists deemed his condition "untreatable."
This history spilled into public view after he was charged with the murder of a woman and her young daughter. Public outrage was manifest in the tabloids. The Blair government responded by proposing a new law to allow people with "dangerous and severe personality disorder" (DSPD) to be held involuntarily for treatment as a protection to the public.
Three years later, the bill remains stalled by civil libertarians and mental-health advocates who complain it would stigmatize the mentally ill and allow the state to lock away people based on the say-so of psychiatrists. A happier outcome, though, has been a public inundated with discussion of the patterns that psychiatrists see in such people -- their indifference to rules and to the feelings and welfare of others, their remorselessness, paranoia and impulsivity.
The commentators in the Harvard case study are surely correct that it takes a finer degree of judgment than just noticing that somebody is "weird" or "antisocial" before it's worth deeming him a threat. But why should we assume such a finer degree of judgment is somehow beyond sophisticated business people?
An astute employer doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure out which employees are having trouble and might bear a closer look. One workplace massacre after another has left good evidence in its wake that such episodes might have been prevented if information in the hands of police had simply been put together with information in the hands of employers.
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:holman.jenkins@wsj.com
Updated September 3, 2003