Emotional harassment in the workplace is only moderately recognized as a threat to health and productivity, and there is no protection for workers subjected to it or policies to prevent it. Since it’s not formally recognized as a threat to workers health, and there is no legislation to protect against it, emotional harassment and abuse is prevalent throughout out the American workforce, causing workers both mental and physical health problems, and cutting into businesses bottom line. Even though it has been shown that businesses executives who pay attention to employee morale, in addition to the other factors, which make a business successful, experience, increased marketplace value, there are still a majority of businesses who allow poor treatment of their employees. It’s time to develop methods to single these offenders out and implement policies that motivate them to shift their culture to one that promotes treating employees well.
A businesses culture is what defines how its employees are treated, whether it’s good or bad. According to Edgar H Schein in The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, “Culture is the sum total of all the shared, taken-for-granted assumptions that a group has learned throughout it’s history (Schein, 1999) Business culture originates in the value set and belief system of the founders of an organization, and ranges from hiring policies, to communication style, to overall attitude, which can be self serving, group oriented, or somewhere in between. Also a reflection of a national, or regional culture, different behaviors can mean different things in the work environment in different areas. For example, to arrive late in Latin America is fashionable, yet arriving late in most Northern European countries is an insult (Schein, 1999).  American culture is “I” oriented, individualistic in nature, adopting the slogan “he who has the most toys, wins”. This mentality so deeply ingrained in our culture, definitely taken for granted, and is the underlying mentality of American businesses owners who treat their employees with disregard.
The authoritarian and domination management approach is considered “good” amongst US business owners (Schein, 1999) and oppressive control is the preferred technique to accomplish their goals. As companies grow too large to manage workers personally, it becomes necessary to create a hierarchical system of management, which can be an effective structure, and is often necessary. However, the profit motivated employer, in the race for toys, who thinks about the numbers and not the people, will view employees as a necessary evil, rather than their most valuable asset, and the hierarchy will be abused as a way to control and dominate. Culturally driven by profit, these leaders ignore employee needs and choose the most profit bearing processes, based only on financial input and output, where, according to Gerald Doppelt in Moral Rights in the workplace, a process “may involve greater health risks and dangers for workers….Yet none of these inputs and costs are immediately represented as employer costs” (Doppelt, 1987). So the US has adopted a business culture that considers profit more important than their overall effect on their workers and the workers communities, definitely a reflection of US culture, where politicians and big businesses place personal interest above the damage being done to the population or environment.
Ultimately this dominating and authoritarian attitude has led to a seemingly subtle, yet potent form of emotional abusiveness in the workplace, and this subtle cousin of physical abuse, is what are undermining the strength, confidence, health and productivity of   American workers. Read the rest of this entry »

Progress is Relative….

Agricultural developments throughout history haven’t always resulted in positive change. In contrast, they leave a massive wake of environmental and social problems. Farming involves “modification of the natural environment by clearing the land of naturally occurring vegetation” and “more intensive land use by humans frequently contribute to soils erosion and a decline in soil fertility” (Scupin and Decorse, pp 216). This is what was happening thousands of years ago when the domestication of crops first appeared, a time referred to by anthropologists as “Neolithic”.  Also noted by Scupin and Decorse were the health consequences, which included poor nutrition and disease from a restricted diet that resulted in development of one crop “to the exclusion of most other food-stuffs” (Scupin and Decorse pp 218).  During this time the development of new farming technology, irrigation and the use of fertilizers “led to the appearance of complex societies”(Scupin & Decorse pp244). These “early states were characterized by a great deal of social inequality” and the ones in power were the ones who had “control of agricultural surpluses” (Scupin & Decorse pp244).  Not a far cry from what we see happening today – on a much larger scale.
During the twentieth century “massive public investments in modern scientific research for agriculture led to dramatic yield breakthroughs in industrialized countries” (B.R. Hazell).  By the 1960’s, starvation had decreased in the industrialized countries as a result, and against the back drop of realizing that “if continued population growth was not matched by dramatic increases in the world’s food supply, large parts of the world would face widespread hunger and famine” (Seth S. King). Bringing these new agricultural developments to these regions was seen as a solution to ending world hunger. Dubbed the Green Revolution by American plant geneticists involved in bioengineering new hybrids of grains in Mexico and the Philippines, the mindset at the time became “the miracle seeds of the Green Revolution increase grain yields and therefore are a key to ending world hunger. Higher yields mean more income for poor farmers, helping them to climb out of poverty, and more food means less hunger” (Food First). The first crops they were working on were “dwarf varieties of wheat and rice capable of doubling or tripling yields per acre in those regions. The new plants had shorter, stiffer stems, and if heavily fertilized and irrigated, could produce much larger heads of grain that did not fall over from their weight”(Seth S. King). Idealistic in concept but limited in its scope, the benefits of agricultural industrialization of third world communities have been defeated by the negative regional, environmental and socio-cultural impacts.
The Green Revolution began in Mexico during the early 1960’s by the team led by Norman Borlaug Read the rest of this entry »