final draft phase 3

BY: Muhammad Umar Kareem

Section: SE-R2
Roll# 20I-0815
Submitted to: Ma’am Naima
Date: 26th December 2020.

This is a comparison of critical writing based on two articles. The name of the first article is
“Building a Better Workplace Starts with Saying Thanks”, and the name of the second article is
“Why People Get Away with Being Rude at Work”. Both articles are published in Harvard
Business Review There are three authors of the first article. The name of the first author is
Lauren R. Locklear. She worked as a doctoral candidate in management at the university of
Central Florida. Her research included positive and negative aspects of communication between
the people. Her colleague and the second author of the first article was Shannon G. Taylor. He is
an associate professor form the same university. His research focuses on leadership and
workplace mistreatment. The third author is Maureen L. Ambrose. She is a Professor of Business
Ethics at UCF’s College of Business. Her research is based on include organizational fairness,
ethics, and workplace deviance. The authors also mentioned that they have a collective
experience of 20 years in the research relevant to the topic. This makes the position of authors
very clear and strong. As far as the second article is concerned, there are four authors of the
second article. The name of the first author is Shannon G. Taylor. He is one of the authors who
wrote the first article. The second author is Donald H. Kluemper. He has multiple roles at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. He researches personality, leadership, and workplace
mistreatment. The third author is W. Matthew Bowler. He is an associate professor in the Spears
School of Business at Oklahoma State University. His research interests include leadership,
social networks, and employee performance. And the fourth author is Jonathon R. B.
Halbesleben. He is the HealthSouth Chair of Health Care Management and Senior Associate
Dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. His research
focuses on employee stress and health. However, the authors did not mention any extra details
like the one in the first article (20 years of experience) to make their position strong relevant to
the topic. 

In the first article, the author tells the reader that uncivil behavior in the workforce is the main
problem for organizations. The author then suggests that simple gratitude can decrease
workplace rudeness. To make his position strong, the author mentions the collective experience
that he and his colleagues have in research that supports the suggestion given by the author. He
then writes about the experiments they carried out and how they support his point of view. In the
end, the author concluded the article by suggesting ways to establish a culture of gratitude. He
suggested that leaders should serve as a role model for their employees. The employees should
be given proper time and space for gratitude and allow employees to interact with beneficiaries.
In the second article, the author mentions that the bad behavior of employees has an impact on
their colleagues. He claims that these employees get away with being rude at the work. To
support his claim, he mentions the research, he and his colleagues conducted. The result of this
research supports the author’s claim. His research also tells that some people did not behave
rudely, but they were blamed for being rude. Just like the previous article, the author concluded
his article by advising the readers the ways that how can leaders combat bias when evaluating
employees. Leaders should be given proper training so they can make proper decisions and the
degree of biasness decreases. 

In both the articles, the authors agree on the same opinion that the behavior of employees affects
other employees and the environment of the workforce. Behavior can also impact the
productivity of employees. Both authors also agree with the opinion that leaders should serve as
role models for their employees and should also try to maintain the peaceful environment of the
workforce. However, the author, in the first article, was interested in telling the readers that
simple gratitude can help to overcome the uncivil behavior in the workforce. He presented the
research that supported his point of view. While on the other hand, in the second article, the
author’s interest was to tell readers about the biased judgments made by the leaders that help the
workers to get away with being rude at work. The author also mentioned that people who are
blamed for rudeness might not be rude at all. He also presented the research that supported his
point of view. Moreover, there was no Authorial Point of View and Bias (cultural, gender-based,
or stereotypical attitudes) shown by any of the authors in both articles.

The author in the first article supported his opinion by showing research based on experiments
and surveys. The experiment was carried out with 147 volunteers as mentioned in paragraph 6.
In the same paragraph, the author also mentions that a week later, volunteers were asked to take
a survey. In paragraph 7, the author mentions another experiment to support his point of view.
The author did not show any evidence to show the credibility of the research he mentioned.
There was no evidence, so it can make readers think that author may be lying about the research
just to support his point of view. The author of the second article supported his claim by showing
research based on multiple experiments and surveys. He also mentioned statistical information in
the first paragraph. The author mentions the first experiment in paragraph 3. Employees from
restaurants were volunteered for the experiment. In the next paragraph, undergraduate students
were asked to recruit working adults from among their friends and family so that researchers
could survey employees and managers from a wide variety of industries, organizations, and jobs.
Moreover, in the 6th paragraph, two more experiments took place. In this article author again did
not provide evidence for the credibility.  

In the first article, the author had an enthusiastic compassionate, and calmer tone. The author had
an enthusiastic tone, when he said, “with our 20 years of collective experience researching
workplace mistreatment, we felt compelled to look at this problem, so we set out to find an
effective and scientifically valid method to curb these toxic behaviors.” ( Locklear, Taylor, &
Ambrose, 2020). The author had a compassionate tone at the start where he discussed problems
faced by people in the workforce. Throughout the text, he had a calmer tone, as he was trying to
get the reader to acknowledge the author’s side is worthy of consideration. The author used
formal vocabulary. He used an active voice to make things clear for the reader. He used the
present tense to describe the problems faced by employees in the workforce. He used the past
tense to explain the research. He again used the present tense in the end to give suggestions. In
the second article, the author had a compassionate and a calmer tone. The author used a
compassionate tone to describe the effects of rudeness at work in the first paragraph. He used a
calmer tone throughout the text for the same reason as mentioned above. He used formal
vocabulary throughout the text, but in the second last paragraph, he mentioned the term “baby
judge school”, which was quite funny. He used active voice with the present tense in the start
and past tense to describe experiments. He again used the present tense in the end to give
suggestions.

In the first article, the author was biased since he presented an experiment in paragraph 6, which
was divided into 2 parts. He talked about the result of the part that supported his point of view
but he didn’t bother to share the result of the second part. It makes the reader think that the result
of that part might contradict the view of the author. In the 6th paragraph of the second article, the
author mentioned that he will conduct 2 experiments, but he mentioned the result of only 1
experiment which means that result of the second experiment was neglected. Maybe the second
experiment contradicts the claims that the author made. It makes the readers think that the
evidence provided by the author is not enough to support his claims.
References
Locklear, L., Taylor, S., & Ambrose, M. (2020). Building a Better Workplace Starts with Saying “Thanks”.