Sweet Revenge
BusinessWeek is carrying an article on "the power of retribution, spite, and loathing in the world of business" -- and unfortunately, it's not the lurid Shakespearean stuff you'd really enjoy reading -- it is a business magazine after all -- but there is enough examples of how payback is dished out in the c-suite -- enough to make those of us cubicle warriors rub our hands in glee. Ahh ... revenge ... getting even, or seeing just retribution being meted to the deserved gives us such satisfaction. It is biologically wired into us to feel real good when someone who has done us wrong, gets what's coming to them. It is a response to perceived injustices -- whether purposeful, or indirect.
At the executive level, emotional responses are just as common as they are around the office, in the classroom, on the factory floor or in the playground. It doesn't matter how mature we are, the response to perceived injustices is universal. While we no longer go for the throat like our ancestors may have -- our observed civility only goes so far. Executives don't talk much about it, but being passed over for a promotion, being dissed by market analysts, being fired ... it can be an amazing motivator to give some comeuppance to someone or a business. For some, it's the primal driver that keeps them going at breakneck speeds to achieve, to beat the competition and prove themselves.
Related reading:
At the executive level, emotional responses are just as common as they are around the office, in the classroom, on the factory floor or in the playground. It doesn't matter how mature we are, the response to perceived injustices is universal. While we no longer go for the throat like our ancestors may have -- our observed civility only goes so far. Executives don't talk much about it, but being passed over for a promotion, being dissed by market analysts, being fired ... it can be an amazing motivator to give some comeuppance to someone or a business. For some, it's the primal driver that keeps them going at breakneck speeds to achieve, to beat the competition and prove themselves.
Related reading:
- Trust and Distrust [PDF] -- Roy J. Lewicki
- Forgiveness: Who Does It and How Do They Do It? [PDF] -- Michael E. McCullough
- Creating Mutually Beneficial Possibilities: Theorizing Factors That Impact An Indivual's Capacity For Moral Imagination [PDF] -- Lindsey Godwin
- The Baltimore Workplace Civility Study [PDF]
- Workplace Bullying Among Business Professionals [PDF] -- Denise Salin
- The Development and Initial Validation of the Organizational Revenge Scale [PDF] -- Jennifer Sommers, Stephen J. Vodanovich
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