Not following through with promises, scapegoating and manipulation through spying and secrecy are …ways of telling people they are not worthy of respect, and they injure their self-esteem. [Canfield & Miller, 1996].

Managerial paranoia has resulted in a hybrid of police state and business office, characterized by an invasive degree of supervision and an obsessive need for conformance. “Command and control” (which has been so common throughout corporate history) is a process whereby managers demand compliance from their employees and then closely scrutinize the process. Always scanning the corporate horizon for hints of disturbance, micromanagers perceive that their task is to quickly quash any signs of independence and to restore equilibrium. The modern employee is the current day version of the oppressed – he/she is goaded, unnecessarily prodded, continuously monitored, and earmarked as good, fair, or poor, all in the name of a paycheck. The implication of micromanagement is that workers cannot be trusted to: (a) finish a task on time; (b) finish a task at all; or (c) finish a task to specification (Barnard, 2008; Lubit, 2004) [from Gilbert, Carr-Ruffino, Ivancevich & Konopaske, in press]. Turn the page…