Imagine you are a recently-hired Chief Operating Officer (COO) in a midsize company preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). You quickly discover multiple personnel problems that require your immediate attention.
Marly started a blog to protest that no one had gotten a raise in two (2) years at the company. She also criticized how the CEO's bonus was awarded and to her, the boss was "out-of-touch."
Jackson was at home one night and posted a rant on his Facebook page criticizing the company he worked for and one of the company's most important customers.
Simon has been using his company-issued BlackBerry to check his conduct transactions and do banking for his own side business.
Bill threatens to sue the company for invasion of privacy after he is disciplined for criticizing a customer in an email. The customer is his personal friend and he sent the email from his personal email account on a company computer.
Mitch, a department supervisor requests your approval to fire his secretary for insubordination. You determine that the secretary refused to prepare false expense reports for Mitch.
Brian's boss refused to sign Lori's leave request for jury duty and now wants to fire Lori for being absent without permission.
As an astute manager, you will need to analyze the employment-at-will doctrine and determine what, if any, exceptions exist creating liability for the company before taking any action.
As you proceed with your investigation, you discover the company has no whistle blower policy.
Summarize the employment-at-will doctrine and all the possible exceptions to the doctrine discussed in the text and then, evaluate three (3) of the six (6) scenarios described by determining:
(a). Whether you can legally fire the employee; include an assessment of any possible and pertinent exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine and how they apply or why they don't.
(b). The primary action(s) that you should take to limit liability and impact on operations AND specify the ethical theory that best supports your decision.
Research, examine and identify your state's policy on employment-at-will policy. Analyze at least one (1) real-world example of an employee or employer utilizing your state's employment-at-will doctrine in the last five (5) years. Include a summary of the facts, issues and the outcome in the identified real-world example.