Fear vs. Free Speech at Work

In his new book, Vanderbilt B-school professor Bruce Barry explores the sometimes threatened status of free speech in the workplace

Bruce Barry

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Do you feel as if your boss controls what you say and do even after hours? If so, you're not alone. After noticing more and more examples of people getting fired or being shunned for their political affiliation, activism, or speech, Bruce Barry, a professor of management and sociology at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, set out to research free speech in the workplace. What he discovered, he says, is that employers have much more power over our personal lives than ever before.

The culmination of his research is the recently published Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, June, 2007). In it, Barry demonstrates the problem through examples—including a woman in Alabama who lost her job for having a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car—and offers viable solutions. But if you're looking for conspiracy theories, don't look to Barry's work. He admits that there's no rampant movement by managers to censor everyone or fire every person who keeps a blog. But he is concerned when free speech is stifled.

"What I'm concerned about is that when someone does get fired for his blog, and it becomes widely known, it puts a chill on everybody else," says Barry. "It sends a clear message: Watch what you say. Your employer is paying attention to your speech, even in some cases when it doesn't have very much at all to do with your job."

Barry recently discussed the erosion of free speech with BusinessWeek reporter Francesca Di Meglio. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

What surprised you most about the research you did?

A lot of the research I did was legal research trying to answer the questions, "Is there free speech in the American workplace? For whom? To what extent?" The knee-jerk answer is, "Not really, because constitutional rights in this country don't really apply on private property or in the private sector." One of the surprises was to actually find out there are some rights to free expression in the workplace, even in the private sector.

[The issue] is complicated. It depends, in part, on where you live because some of this is governed by employment law, which varies widely from state to state. It depends, in part, on what kind of speech we're talking about because there are some laws that cover certain kinds of activity, like political activity, but not others. Those laws also vary from state to state. The other alarming thing I found was that, even with all those complications and exceptions, employers have nearly total control over the expressive activities of employees in this country both on and off the job.

You write that the erosion of free speech has gotten worse in the last 30 years. Why do you think that's happening as we're modernizing and, one would hope, becoming more transparent and tolerant?

You can look at it from both sides—the perspective of the employer and employee. From the standpoint of employees, work has changed over the last 30 years. There's less job security, more global trade, more people relying on multiple employment opportunities to form a professional career.

All of this makes for less job security and more concern about getting in trouble with one's employer. I think people self-censor more because of the changing nature of employment. Something else that has gone on in the last 20 or 30 years is increased attention by employers to their image and stewardship of their brand and reputation. This makes them increasingly cautious about employee expression that might depart from the preferred corporate point of view or somehow reflect negatively on the brand, image, or firm (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/15/04, "Free Speech and the Factory Floor").