Employment at-Will Doctrine

Employment At-Will

Latonnia Y. Lee

Strayer University

LEG500 - Law, Ethics and Corp. Governance

Dr. Boneita Campbell

February 9, 2015

In the late 1800s, the employment at-will doctrine was developed to honor the rights of employee’s decision to work for any company they choose. Also, the doctrine states that employers have the same rights to select whom they would like to employ. “The employment-at-will doctrine avows that, when an employee does not have a written employment contract and the term of employment is of indefinite duration, the employer can terminate the employee for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all” (Muhl, 2001). Under the consequences, workers in the United States believe that the benefit for performing their jobs well should be the result of job security. Unfortunately, this expectation that employees will not be terminated has diminished in the past. As a result, companies have shown an escalation of reductions in the workforce and job turnover.

In scenario three, my investigation concluded that Bill’s misconduct of using his company’s issued BlackBerry to run his personal business is a conflict-of-interest and . According to the employment-at-will doctrine there are no pertinent exceptions as it relates to this case. Therefore, this employee can be fired. The primary actions that should be taken to limit the liability and impact on operations would be to have Bill sign an agreement stating that the cell phone is the companies’ property and should only be used for work related projects. Also, repercussions should be noted in the contract stating that if the agreement is breached then the employee should be terminated immediately. Other primary actions that should be taken to prove breach of contract are to retrieve cell phone records from the carrier. The company will investigate Bill’s business advertisements, if any, placed on Social Media websites to found out if he is using the company’s device...