Kevin Bateman

MBA 633 Position Paper
Description
In 2009, Ashley Payne was summoned to her principal’s office at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Miss Payne was an English teacher at the time. Her principal ask if she had a Facebook page and when she answered yes, the principal asked Miss Payne if she had pictures of her drinking alcohol and using profanity on her Facebook page. There were pictures on her page from a summer trip to Ireland in which she is seen holding a glass of wine and beer. The profanity was a comment Miss Payne made about attending a local event known as “Crazy Bitch Bingo”. When Ashley replied yes, the principal told her she had the choice of resigning or face an immediate suspension. Miss Payne chose to resign. Payne then filed a lawsuit against the school district for wrongful termination. In 2009, most companies had very loose social media policies for their employees, if they had any policy at all. The Barrow County School district was very loose and open for interpretation. During Payne’s hearing, court documents revealed that school officials warned teachers about “unacceptable on-line behaviors”. Officials claimed Miss Payne’s Facebook page promoted alcohol use and contained profanity (Sullivan, 2011).
Application of Organization Behavior The social perception process is the organizational behavior model the school district can use to justify asking Miss Payne to resign from her position. As a school teacher and public official Miss Payne needed to be aware people are making judgments on her personality and behavior off of how they perceive the situation. Since perception is based off of one’s interpretation of a situation and not an exact recording people believe what they think they see and not what actually happened (Luthans, 2011). Teachers are held to higher standard not only in the classroom, but outside of the classroom as well. They are representatives of the school district and the entire teaching profession. It is the teacher’s responsibility to conduct themselves in a manner in which their actions can be perceived as being positive. In the case of Miss Payne, the material she posted on her Facebook page allows people to perceive and make judgments about her alcohol use. Since she is a teacher, the connection can then be made that all teachers act in this way. This would be stereotyping, which is to classify persons into a group based on perception errors (Luthans, 2011). Ashley Payne is also effected by her pictures through the Halo/Horns effect of social perception as well. The halo/horn effect is when a person is perceived as positive or negative on the basis of a single trait or event (Luthans, 2011). For example, Miss Payne was seen as a good teacher in her interactions with students. She did not have any history of misconduct. After the anonymous tip which led to the principal seeing her Facebook page, Miss Payne fell victim to the Horns effect in which one event changed the perception others had of her. Another theory that applies in this case is Azjen’s Theory of Planned Behavior. This theory started out back in the 1980s as Martin Fishbein’s Theory of Reasoned Action and together with Azjen adjusted it when they added the Perceived Behavioral Control portion to original theory. This theory is used to explain behavior in a variety of situations. The theory is made up of behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs which are evaluated by the individual and leads to the individual’s intention which then leads to the behavior. An individual evaluates a behavior in relation to the beliefs about the behavior. Behavioral beliefs are the attitudes to which the individual has a favorable opinion of a particular behavior. The normative beliefs are how the individual perceives the societal impact of performing or not performing the behavior. The perceived behavioral control is the degree of difficulty of performing the actual behavior. After evaluating these three factors, the person either has the intent to perform the behavior or the intent to not perform the behavior. Once the intention is formed, the behavior will normally follow the intention. In this case, Ashley obviously decided that posting the pictures of herself on vacation consuming alcohol was easy to do, was within the norms of society and that there would not be any significant unfavorable opinions of these photos. She then intended to post the photos and followed through with the behavior.
The normative beliefs that Ashley did not consider is how the parents of her students would react to photos of her drinking. She should have considered whether she was friends with any of students and whether their parents would object to the behavior she was promoting on social media. “Teachers and students "friending" each other on Facebook and other social networking sites is yet another area of concern. Even when these contacts do not ripen into a sex scandal, there often is plenty of online banter between teachers and students that starts off innocently, but casually drifts into personal matters that are off limits in any teacher-student relationship. Facebook certainly is a more convenient venue for this sort of misbehavior than has existed in the past, but we are kidding ourselves to think that this problem did not exist before the Internet. What the easy access and impulsivity of this new medium have done is lay bare a longstanding failure to stake out the acceptable boundaries of teacher-student relationships away from school.” (Rubin, 2014) “Indeed, over the last few years the Board has considered over 129 cases involving social media.6 In the majority of these cases the Board primarily focuses upon two issues: (1) whether an employer has an overbroad social media policy that unlawfully restricts an employee's use of social media, and (2) whether an employer has unlawfully terminated an employee for the content of the employee's social media post. In many of these cases the Board has found that an employer's social media policy or that the termination of an employee was unlawful because the employer's action violated the employee's section 7 rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 157, 158 (1947) (Hemenway, 2013).” Since section 7 of the NLRA deals with “concerted activity” which activity by two or more employees to improve the work environment, the photos of Ashely do not qualify and Ashley could have been legally terminated for her posting of the photos.

Rubin, D. B. (2014). Social media and the schools. Computer and Internet Lawyer, 31(7), 11-16. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.bellevue.edu:80/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1539328031?accountid=28125
Hemenway, A. (2013). The NLRB and social media: Does the NLRB "like" employee interests? Journal of Corporation Law, 38(3), 607-634. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.bellevue.edu:80/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1368563423?accountid=28125