Do something--he's about to snap.

Abstract

Lynne Tabor, an IT manager at manufacturing giant MMI, has a great team. Everyone works hard and gets along. Everyone, that is, except Max Dyer. Max is a talented programmer, but he's terrible in the interpersonal skills department. So terrible, in fact, that three years ago Lynne reworked his job after employees complained that he was unengaged and even belligerent. Since then, he's been a solid worker, putting in extra hours and meriting good performance evaluations. But recently, Max's coworkers have noticed a change for the worse in him. True, everyone at MMI is on edge after a round of layoffs, but Max's behavior seems like more than a case of the jitters. To make matters worse, reports of a workplace shooting in Seattle are all over the news. Paige overhears Max shouting at someone on the phone. George finds Max pinning up a certificate from a shooting range in his cubicle, and Nicole, who worries they will all end up as statistics of office violence, wants to know how Lynne plans to ensure their safety. When Lynne tries to talk to Max, it's clear he thinks his coworkers are out to get him. And the truth is, they believe he fits the profile of a man on the edge. But what can Lynne do about an employee who has never made so much as a veiled threat to anyone? Commentators James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University; Steve Kaufer, a cofounder of the Workplace Violence Research Institute; Christine Pearson, a management professor at Thunderbird; Christine Porath, a professor of management and organizational behavior at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business; and Ronald Schouten, the director of the Law and Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, offer advice in this fictional case study.