John says,
"While I don't have stats to support the statement, I would venture to say
that major corporations are no different than governmental beaucracies.
Each deals with "problem employees" as social illnesses, and while some
employees may indeed need professional counseling resulting perhaps in
termination, more often it is the imposition of heavy-handed managers who
are themselves encouraged to "deal with" such employees. As Robert Bacal
notes, a compentent performer of yesterday may be displaying a normal
human reaction to an abusive "boss/manager"."
This really is a good point at which to collect some data. We each know
hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Approximately how many have been
wrongly terminated, how many rightly terminated, and how many do you know
in total?
My experience may very well be unusual, because it is only my own. My
stats are 1,2, 1000 (more or less). In thirty years of experience, I can
honestly remember all the firings I am aware of for 'malfeasance' or poor
performance or poor attitude because there have been so remarkably few.
Based on my own invalid statistical sampling, very few people of any kind
get fired for poor performance of any kind. This is particularly true in
government (US only) and in education. I can't really see evidence here
of heavy-handed managers.
I exlcude layoffs and downsizings because they are not relevant to John's
statement, not because I condone them.
We may characterize managers as heavy-handed for other reasons, and if we
do, then we need to understand the systemic causes for that behavior.
That is, after all, the essence of learning. What is others' experience
with firings? This really is an interesting subject on which to collect
some relevant data.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>