“Workplace Violence at the Connecticut State Lottery”
Order Description
Connecticut State Lottery
Instances of workplace violence have today become so commonplace that now only the most horrific end up being big news. However, back in 1998, when Matthew Beck, an employee of the Connecticut State Lottery (CSL) in Newington, CT, went on a deadly rampage at work, such incidents were still relatively rare occurrences.
Beck worked in the accounting department of CSL. For the major part of his tenure at CSL, he had been a successful performer. Yet sometime in 1997, problems arose for Beck. He had been questioning his pay. He didn’t feel his boss or other CSL officials were adequately compensating him for all the extra hours he had worked. Beck challenged company officials, following policies and protocols that were in place. He even had the support of his employees association (a sort of union), which helped him in his dispute. But to no avail; Beck was unsuccessful in his challenge.
Upset over the decisions, Beck became stressed, unhappy, and had difficulty concentrating on his job. Nothing his boss did could ease Beck’s feeling that he was being wronged. Finally these feeling overwhelmed Beck, and company officials decided he needed a stress leave. For the next several months Beck was away from work, with pay, to regain his composure and put the this issue behind him. Four months later, he seemed fine, in good spirits, and ready to resume his job. And his boss welcomed him back to CSL.
For most of his first week back, everything appeared normal. Beck was discharging his assigned duties, and everything about him appeared normal. What happened that frightful Friday, March 6, 1998, however, may never be explained. Beck arrived at work and headed to the executive offices. Inside the building, he produced a weapon and shot his boss and two other CSL officials. Hearing the commotion and recognizing the threat to all employees, the president of CSL attempted to get everyone out of the building. Confident that he had removed employees for the immediate threat, the president ran from the building. In hot pursuit was Matthew Beck. With police officers arriving in the parking lot, the president tripped and fell to the ground. In spite of pleas from the president not to kill him, Beck twice fired his 9 mm weapon. Moments later, Beck shot again, a self-inflicted wound that ended the horror.
Detailed newspaper accounts about Beck and the CSL tragedy can be found at the following links:
New York Times – “Rampage in Connecticut” (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/07/nyregion/rampage-connecticut-overview-connecticut-lottery-worker-kills-4-bosses-then.html)
New York Times – “Killer Came Back to Work Early” (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/12/nyregion/lottery-personnel-file-shows-killer-came-back-to-work-early-from-a-leave.html)
New York Times – “Son Not a Monster” (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/09/nyregion/father-of-lottery-killer-says-son-not-a-monster.html)
As a response to the growing problem of workplace violence, managers and organizations have struggled to find ways to prevent such incidents from taking place. The Robbins/DeCenzo/Coulter text, for instance, discusses workplace violence on pages 407 and 408.
The Federal Government has developed a comprehensive manual for dealing with the threat of workplace violence. An on-line version of that manual can be found at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (www.opm.gov) web site:
Dealing with Workplace Violence – A Guide
In order to better understand how organizations can cope with workplace violence, read the relevant part of that manual and think about how the suggestions it makes might have applied to the incident at the Connecticut State Lottery.
Complicating efforts to deal with workplace violence are those legal mechanisms put in place to protect those with mental illness from workplace discrimination. These include the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the privacy rules enacted as part of the the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The links that follow will take you to web pages where you can learn more about how each might apply to individuals prone to workplace violence:
ADA and employment (https://archive.opm.gov/Employment_and_Benefits/WorkLife/OfficialDocuments/handbooksguides/WorkplaceViolence/index.asp)
HIPAA health record privacy rules (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html)
The Center for Aggression Management at Western Kentucky University has done extensive research into workplace aggression and developed a powerful way of describing it — primal versus cognitive aggression. The Center promotes violence awareness training programs to organizations of all sorts; a summary of the Center’s work can be found at:
Primal versus Cognitive Aggression — A Summary
What follows are the points you should cover in your case essay:
Summarize the events that led up to the Connecticut State Lottery incident, including those elements in Matthew Beck’s background that may have contributed to what eventually happened.
Assess Beck’s behavior using the primal versus cognitive aggression model described in the Aggression Management slideshow.
Evaluate, using the Office of Personnel Management Handbook, the manner in which the Connecticut State Lottery handled Beck up to the point of the March, 1998 incident. Focus on what steps you’d suggest the CSL should have taken.
Identify any legal constraints (ADA and HIPAA) that might have made it more difficult for a management team to anticipate and respond to the sort of threat individuals like Matthew Beck represent.
Finally, develop and defend some overall conclusions as to whether workplace violence incidents like Beck’s murderous rampage can be prevented. If so, how? If not, why not? Be sure to carefully develop and defend your assertions.
Case essay assignment adapted from materials in Robbins and Decenzo, Fundamentals of Management (3rd ed.), p. 215.
PS. all the link a pasted next to the article are directed to the sources the professor ask us to read and look at to writer this case study.
