Aug

6

Web Posts Get 27 Fired

Filed Under Human Development 

The Associated Press reported that the Automobile Club of Southern California recently fired twenty-seven employees after recieving a complaint from an employee about “feeling harassed by the comments, which were written by employees on the MySpace.com Web site on their own time at home.”

The Automobile Club Spokeswoman Carol Thorp stated: “”This isn’t a free speech issue. You can’t just go on and say anything about anybody — and keep your job.”

Due to the fact that corporations are private entities, they can enact and enforce policies that attempt to control the behavior of their employees. The rationale for such a policy is two-fold.

First, if a person is an employee of the corporation, then he or she is also a representative of the corporation. Moreover, a corporation seeks to maintain a good reputation with the public because it relies on the public to make business. For example, if employee John Doe of XYZ Inc. is sending spam with the signature “John Doe, Employee of XYZ Inc,� that will reflect not just on Mr. Doe, but XYZ Inc. as well.

The second reason a corporation would want to control the behavior of their employee is because the employee doesn’t just represent a specific corporation, but an entire industry. Using the previous example, if XYZ Inc. is an energy company, then the entire energy industry will be negatively recognized because of Mr. Doe’s spamming.

In sum, we are taught that stereotyping is wrong, but we must also remember that our behavior is reflective of us, as an individual, AND the group we associate ourselves with.

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