Ethics: A Good Reason To Sit Further Away From Your Boss (telegraph.co.uk)

schwit1 writes to point out an interesting finding about ethics in the workplace, but one that might not surprise anyone in the vast majority of workplaces: namely, that sitting far from your boss has some important advantages when it comes to stopping the spread of unethical behavior; ethics are a chief focus of researcher Gijs van Houwelingen . The research, published in the Journal of Management, sought to find out "how spatial distance between higher and lower management" affects the spread of behaviour and fair procedures in the work place.

"Distance is a very useful tool that can be used to stop negative behaviours from spreading through an organization,... It creates the freedom to make up your own mind."

Comments

Avoidance

[alzoron]

Sounds to me like it's just avoiding the core issue; the boss is a terrible boss and should be replaced. Of course if the company is just rotten to begin with all the way up the management chain you can't really expect this to happen. In that case you should try distancing yourself from the whole company instead of just the management.

Re:Avoidance

[phantomfive]

Unethical boss? Distance yourself from the company.
When a company rips its customers off, you can be sure as night follows day, that it will rip you off soon.

Re:Avoidance

[JMJimmy]

It also has the reverse effect, when you have an ethical boss and underlings who think the boss is 'naive' the distance allows them to behave unethically as long as the boss doesn't find out.

Re:Avoidance

[TWX]

On the other hand, being away from one's boss is a good way to not get recognition for even large accomplishments, while those that are close to the boss, providing that the boss likes them as people, move up and get the perks because even doing their normal duties gets them recognition.

I've known two people that served in the US military, one in the Marines and one in the Navy. Both observed that officers and enlisted that worked closely with the CO moved up much faster than those that did field work. Those that did the most real work and were good at it were passed over. On top of that, sometimes displaying vulnerability and weakness, if the right kinds of those, could move up out of sympathy when they were arguably worse candidates.

So maybe don't get the office next to your boss or the cube right outside of his door, but if you want to move up don't be on the other side of the building either.

Re:Avoidance

[turbidostato]

"It also has the reverse effect"

Of course it is. The article's conclusion is naive at best and stupid at worst since the real conclusion is "being near the boss facilitates being at boss' reach" which, of course, is a platitude.

You, as a hire are in one of two situations: you either are happy with your position or you are not.

If the former you don't want to be too near to the boss to avoid the chance of being a pawn on his intrigues (if you are OK chances if you move is to the worse), but not so far away that he forgets why is he paying you.

If the later, you are either trying to climb the ladder, in which case you definitely want to be near your boss you maximize your chances of promotion (at a higher chance of screwing up, either really or in his perception) or you are trying to get out of the company, in which case you, yes, want to be as far from your boss as possible to maximize the chances he forgets about you.

Now, you don't need a study to probe the obvious but, if any, to disprove this "common sense" approach.

Re:Avoidance

[Lumpy]

"Those that did the most real work and were good at it were passed over."

It seems they were not good at observation. If you are really good at your job, you WILL NOT BE PROMOTED. you need to be medicore at your job and good at ass kissing to get promoted. It has been this way from the beginning of time.

Too many people buy into the lie that if you are really good at what you do you will be rewarded. you are never rewarded, you are kept right where you are to do your job really well and make others look good.

Re:Avoidance

[hummassa]

True enough. In Admin 101 we learn that when you promote everyone that is good at his job, you end up with everyone at the position they suck the most... then you tank the entire firm because of that. RAISE. If someone is good at their job, the right way of reward them is to raise their salary (you can even compute how much they contribute more to the earnings of the firm, and raise them accordingly), not to "promote" them. That is triply-true in tech companies, because middle management sucks, but BEING middle management sucks more (which probably is a reason why middle management sucks so much).

Confusing all-around

[quantaman]

For one thing this isn't about sitting far away from your boss, the study was about managers being more likely to treat their subordinates the way their own bosses treat them when they sit closer to them. The /. summary actually seems to understand this a little better.

But the more confounding thing was when they were talking to the researchers.

The study demonstrated that when someone works near their manager, they also feel psychologically closer to them, and the opposite was true at larger distances.

"We saw that the more distant someone is, they’re less likely to identify with their boss or describe themselves in relation to their boss," van Houwelingen said.

[...]

"Distance is a very useful tool that can be used to stop negative behaviours from spreading through an organization," he said "It creates the freedom to make up your own mind."

But I don't see why they're only talking about negative behaviour since positive behaviour should also spread by the same mechanism. Perhaps upper management is more likely to spread negative things, or the cost of Enrons is too great to offset the benefit of really functional organizations, but I wish they had at least acknowledged the possibility.

Re:Confusing all-around

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps upper management is more likely to spread negative things

It's their job. If they're not abusing people, they're not doing their job.

I have 20+ years in management while staying elbows deep in the tech part. IMO, if you're not enabling and respecting your direct reports, and not willing to take their suggestions (validation required by the people that will be required to do 1st level support), you're not doing your job as s manager. I make it a habit to check in with ALL of them on a daily basis - not to judge, but a sanity check on how they are doing, and to give them a chance to vent and / or raise a flag if something's going wrong, or needs a sanity check.
My door is always open, and they all know that, but sometimes the gobs of meetings get in the way...

I've found the exact opposite to be true...

[overlook77]

Really depends on the situation, but I've observed that people that sit closer to their manager end up developing more friendships with them which has obvious advantages. If a manager has a lot of direct reports, they will probably interact with the people closest to them out of convenience. More interactions and visibility with someone's manager allows them to showcase their strengths more often and talk about what they are working on. It also will increase their chances that their boss will be more empathetic towards them. However, if you are lazy and/or a screw-up and you just want to coast by, obviously sit far away from the manager (and everyone else for that matter). If you are concerned with upward mobility, you don't want to be some silent, nameless face in a far corner in the office unless your output is 100% of your job performance and your manager is staying well aware of your work. However, networking/relationship building is usually the best way to be "successful" in an office.