Workplace violence is a growing phenomenon in modern corporate culture. According to authors Richard V. Denenberg and Mark Braverman in The Violence-Prone Workplace, it is corporate culture and management that often sew the seeds of workplace violence: “The influence of stress confirms our view that a tendency toward violence is often bred by the workplace itself” (ix). In this work the authors provide us with case studies of real-life workplace violence, many of which ended in fatalities. The authors argue that many companies waste effort trying to discover which employees are most or least likely to be violent, instead of reshaping and restructuring the organization and policies to respond to potential trouble.
From a Connecticut lottery employee who killed four co-workers to the “maintenance yard bloodbath”, the authors provide us with real-life cases of employees who resorted to deadly violence when they felt they had no other alternative. While many companies try to deduce from profiles or other measures which employees may be potentially violent, the authors argue that these attempts are in vain because they do nothing to change the root of the problem. The root of the problem is often the organization and management environment which induces stress among employees and often ignores their needs, misguides their efforts at help, or adds to the stress being experienced by the individual. As Denenberg (et al. 16) writes, “Rather than hunt for a few supposed ‘bad apples’ in the barrel, we ought to examine the barrel itself, recognizing that violence is ultimately the product of social or organizational change and other factors that leave the working environment potentially volatile.”
Rather than just providing examples of how organizations fail to reduce volatility in the workplace, the authors try to offer resolutions for doing so. They do not just offer stories of individuals whose behavior ended in f...