Discussion

Employee Violence Affiliation: Introduction Violence at the workplace by employees may be physical or otherwise and can be as a result of workplace-related problems or personal by the employees or employer. A keen manager can detect an employee with violent traits and hence curb them as soon as possible.
Should a manager or managers be held either legally or ethically responsible for harm that is done to another employee when an employee becomes violent?
Managers can be held ethically and legally responsible for harm because employees are under their supervision and hence are supposed to detect any changes in an employee’s behavior hence violent traits can be pointed out by the manager. One of the responsibilities of a manager according to USDA is to ensure they run a background check on employees before hiring and also detecting and responding to any potential threats by that employee. Failure to do this may lead to a manager being legally charged with negligence of responsibilities.
Does it make any difference if the manager(s) suspected that that particular employee had problems, although he or she did not know for certain of those violent behavior propensities?
The manager having knowledge and failing to act on that information has even more legal and ethical implications on the manager than not having any prior knowledge at all. This represents not only negligence but also ignorance. Even though the punishment may be the same in front of the law, ethically, that manager is worse than the one who had no knowledge. Failure to run a complete background check and investigate or inquire further on the violent behavior of the employee amounts to being liable to any violent act the employee might enforce on another employee and hence the manager being held liable to the harmed or injured employee too.
Conclusion
In conclusion, according to USDA, the responsibilities of the manager towards ensuring that the employees being hired have no violence behavior or predisposition of violent behavior are very important in order to protect the other employees and also the image or the organization failure to which ethical and legal action may be employed on the manager.
References
Ivancevich, J. et al. (2007). Organizational behavior and management. New York: McGraw-Hill/ Irwin.
Paludi, M. et al. (2006). Understanding Workplace Violence: A Guide for Managers and Employees. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group.