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Beware The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences

Beware The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences
Source: Report from a contributor submitted anonymously

The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences is sometimes used to describe the result where all of the potential impact of actions to be taken by an organization are not recognized in the course of its decision-making exercises. Our anonymous contributor offers the following series of decisions recently made by an employer as an example of this doctrine.

1. The employer was security conscious and required that passwords be used to access its computers and for entering and retrieving electronically stored data. In addition, access to many of its facilities such as its parking lots and research areas required passwords or compliance with other procedures that were computer controlled.

2. The employer had a number divisions, each staffed with individuals responsible for maintaining that division?s computerized financial and other records and data. Access to the computer and, or, access to data files required employee-created passwords.

3. The employer had a central computer service unit responsible for installing computers and maintaining all its computer operations, including the electronic security system and the resetting of passwords in the event a computer or data files could not be accessed as a result of not having the correct password.

4. The employer decided that budget problems required it to layoff a certain number of staff members to achieve ?financial savings.?

5. The employer decided the lay off would include a number of the division staff members responsible for processing their division?s computerized records and, in addition, it would lay off some of its central computer service unit staff members and ?out-source? its computer service operations.

6. The employer decided that it would summarily dismiss all the employees to be laid off simultaneously.

On the day of the lay off each staff member affected was told that he or she had a limited amount of time to pack all their personnel belongings, vacate their work station and that "security" would monitor this activity and then escort the individual from the facility.

This turned out to be a ?perfect storm? of decision-making.

On its next business day, the employer found it was ?locked out? of many parts of its computer system. It discovered that it could not access many of the records maintained by the division members that had been laid off nor could it change authorizations with respect to those permitted to enter, or be barred from entering, its facilities such as a parking lot or a secure work site.

The reason for this, as the employer quickly realized, was because many of the passwords and procedures required to activate computers and to access and modify data files were known only to its just terminated former employees.

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).