We’ve seen so many things go from being bad for you to being good that these kind of scientific flip-flops no longer surprise us.
A little bit of alcohol is now considered beneficial, and red wine is particularly good. Dark chocolate boosts your brainpower; so do video games, which improve dexterity. And the sun is no longer only a delivery system for cancer but a good way to get some Vitamin D.
You get the idea. Most things have benefits when used in moderation.
Now there’s something else you can add to the list: being a bully at work.
Yes, bullying is a bad thing whether it happens in school, on the Internet, in the office or anywhere else. We all agree on that. And yes, people who are being bullied are often so traumatized that they’ve turned violent against their tormentors and even themselves.
There is nothing sadder, in my opinion, than someone taking his own life because of bullying that could have been stopped.
That’s why a recent study entitled “Political Skill and Job Performance of Bullies,” published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology, is so intriguing. In a nutshell, the thesis by a gang of professors is that workplace bullies move up the corporation ladder quickly, as long as they push people around in moderation.
These professors aren’t endorsing bullying — at least I don’t think they are. But they do think it has benefits for the bully — namely, better jobs.
Bullies, the study found, are very skilled in workplace politics. They — like the kids in the schoolyard and on the Internet — know whom to go after, how to divide their opponents for higher positions in the company and how to make themselves look better.
And it starts at an early age. “Interestingly, bullies were more likely to be seen as leaders by their classmates,” the study said. “Research also suggests that socially skilled bullies will be rated more favorably by their teachers.”
Once they learn to con teachers and push around classmates, bullies have an easy time making the transition to the workplace. “These results translate seamlessly to research and theory relating to political skill in the workplace,” according to the study.
So should you become a workplace bully, or maybe train your kid to be one?
Nah. Someday the experts will change their mind on this one as well. Besides, the Journal of Managerial Psychology did add this caveat: “Bullies have the potential to experience a backlash from their colleagues, which has the potential to even be violent.”
Really, what’s worse than being beaten up at work by a gang co-workers?
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Wall Street really doesn’t get it!
Last Wednesday, the stock market got a little weak when the news came out that “several” members of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee think quantitative easing, its money-printing operation, should be curtailed.
Why? For one thing, QE isn’t doing much to fix the economy. But it is redistributing wealth from those who have savings accounts to those who invest in the stock market, which has had a wild ride upward because of all the QE liquidity.
Naturally, stock investors weren’t happy that anyone was picking on their beloved QE. So equities declined yesterday and were destined for an even bigger drop this morning.
Share prices in Japan had fallen an enormous 7 percent, and it wasn’t looking good when Wall Street opened for business yesterday.
Then the posse rode to the rescue.
First, the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, John Williams, stated the obvious: “We can adjust [QE] down some, watch how things progress from there and then adjust it again one way or the other,” Bloomberg News quoted Williams as saying.
In other words, Williams was telling the world that the Fed really, really cares about what Wall Street thinks and will do anything to curry favor with the money men.
Then a market guru from Goldman Sachs did what Goldman Sachs always does: predicted that asset prices were going higher. That’s not hard to understand, since Goldman always “talks its book,” as they say on Wall Street.
But that’s not why Wall Street doesn’t get it.
It’s clear from the minutes of the Fed’s April meeting that sentiment in the policy-making group is shifting away from more quantitative easing. The only thing that could change that shift is a sudden, unexpected dip in the US economy.
Overall, the economy, of course, isn’t doing well. But the nuances are what count toward the direction of Fed policy.
So, for instance, Wall Street cheered last Thursday (and rallied stock prices) when some housing numbers came out better than expected and when new unemployment claims came in a tad more positive than in recent weeks.
And on Tuesday, stocks gained nicely because new data showed that housing prices were rising sharply.
What Wall Street doesn’t understand is this: Although better economic news may be a good thing (in theory, at least), this is simply going to make the anti-QE forces on the Fed stronger.
Someday Wall Street is going to start considering “good” economic news to be a bad thing. And when that happens, investors aren’t going to know which way is up.