It was a particularly nasty incident involving a foreman that triggered Tampa Electric Company’s decision to switch to a nonpunitive approach to discipline. The labor relations manager recalled the 1977 confrontation between the foreman and a lineman this way: “The lineman’s confrontational behavior caused the working foreman to grab the lineman by his shirt collar and shake him severely. This is unacceptable behavior for a working foreman, and he was suspended for 13 days. I had no choice under the existing policy but to support that suspension, but I never felt good about it. All I did was penalize an employee and his family; I did not change his behavior in any way. I believe he would have done the same thing again. I forced compliance, but he will still believe the company was wrong.”
A version of this article appeared in the July 1985 issue of Harvard Business Review.