He's saying that fewer people will form relationships if that policy is in place. Anyone with management experience knows that prohibitions are never followed 100%. It doesn't mean that they're useless. They minimize the incidence of the undesirable activity.
Believe it or not, there are some people with discipline and emotional control out there. Romance is not an unstoppable force (despite what Hollywood wants you to believe). In the presence of a prohibition on office romance, parties who take their job seriously will employ personal restraint and refrain from engaging in office romance.
"Telling people they're not allowed to do something just makes them hide it" is a tired and frankly juvenile argument. Yes, it's true that in some cases, which, generally speaking, are fairly rare (depending on what you're prohibiting), people will continue to break the rules and hide it. But many people will choose to avoid the risk altogether and follow the rules.
Maybe we should be asking whether a corporation should be attempting to implement such rules. Personally, I think it should be off-limits, just like all sorts of other things that business owners would love to enforce but can't.
Well, we know this tends to be a problem, so clearly not every combination of adults are capable, and the company as a whole tends to pay a price. Therefore the company has an incentive to try to minimize that cost as much as possible; the question is what kinds of policies (if any) will move us closer to that local maximum.
> He's saying that fewer people will form relationships if that policy is in place[...]They minimize the incidence of the undesirable activity.
No, I said people will hide those relationships if they choose to pursue them not that fewer will happen. Attraction is a very natural thing and while such rules may be lower the amount I'm unconvinced it'll be anything significant (just look at our history of prohibition for multiple things that just doesn't work overall).
To me it's not an "undesirable activity". That's similar, in my mind, to making a rule that gay people shouldn't be gay at your place of work. You're not going to stop it. You'll likely make someone choose work over their social life but ultimately it's just going to make people sneak around and if there are clear issues with a subordinate dating a manager being closed about it will make it more difficult to find out about it and who knows what type of damage that could do to your organization.
> Believe it or not, there are some people with discipline and emotional control out there. Romance is not an unstoppable force
The problem is falling for someone isn't something within your control. You can repress it and you can choose not to act on it but you can't tell your brain to just not feel attraction (at least not in any direct, quick way). It's part of our biology and it's natural to want to be with someone that you're drawn to.
> "Telling people they're not allowed to do something just makes them hide it" is a tired and frankly juvenile argument. Yes, it's true that in some cases, which, generally speaking, are fairly rare
The prohibition of alcohol, the "war" on drugs and countless other times in history disagrees with your assessment. When you are dealing with a natural biological process banning it just ends up causing more problems. Banning alcohol and drugs still caused people to crave and want it due to the way it affects our brain's chemistry in desirable ways. Trying to ban gay people from various aspects of our lives didn't stop them from being gay because, again, it's a natural part of their biology.
So if you have sources which state that banning something that is part of a natural, biological process actually causes the majority to no longer do it I would absolutely love to read them. I haven't seen anything like that.
I was referring to the immediate parent post of the one I was replying to (the post in which the misunderstanding occurred), not your post. Sorry for any confusion on this front.
> That's similar, in my mind, to making a rule that gay people shouldn't be gay at your place of work.
Incorrect. We're talking about behaviors, not thoughts or impulses. It is completely within a person's control to refrain from engaging in romantic activity with another person. The policy makes no comment about attraction or thought because no one cares and it's totally irrelevant. Feel whatever you choose to feel, but keep it internal at work. This is aka "professionalism".
>You'll likely make someone choose work over their social life but ultimately it's just going to make people sneak around
I strongly disagree. I believe most employees would adhere to the prohibition. Not 100%, but probably 90%.
>The problem is falling for someone isn't something within your control.
Absolutely false. This is the lie that Hollywood wants you to believe because it makes it easier to sell movies (it also makes it easier to destroy a society's moral fabric). You do not have to be a victim of your impulses.
> It's part of our biology and it's natural to want to be with someone that you're drawn to.
I'm all about biology but we aren't apes -- we can control our impulses. That's part of the expectation in a professional environment.
>The prohibition of alcohol, the "war" on drugs and countless other times in history disagrees with your assessment.
First, no they don't. Use goes down during prohibition. There will always be people that break the rules, but prohibition does have a high-quality prohibitive effect.
Consider gun laws that prohibit ownership or carriage of certain types of firearms. They don't stop everyone, but they stop most people. That is in fact part of the 2nd Amendment argument; if you make gun ownership illegal, only criminals will have firearms. Most citizens follow the law and do not consider the risk involved in violating prohibition reasonable.
>When you are dealing with a natural biological process banning it just ends up causing more problems.
You're conflating behaviors with biology. In society we manage our impulses so that they don't destroy us. Hedonism is incompatible with productivity. Discipline IS possible and must be re-enshrined as a critical value if we're going to make it as a culture.
>So if you have sources which state that banning something that is part of a natural, biological process actually causes the majority to no longer do it I would absolutely love to read them. I haven't seen anything like that.
There's really no reason to humor you on things you could easily Google yourself, but I'll throw one your way: "We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60–70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level." [0]
Prohibition initially caused a sharp decrease in consumption. As it became obvious that few people respected the law, a lot of people picked the habit back up, but there was still a very significant suppressing effect, keeping consumption down 30-40% from pre-Prohibition levels. That lasted until the 18th Amendment was repealed.
That means that initially, 7 in 10 drinkers stopped when it became illegal. Even as it became apparent that the law would be widely disregarded, 4 in 10 pre-Prohibition drinkers still declined to drink because it was illegal.
Now, I'm not saying there weren't negative effects associated with prohibition, but the truth is that if you make something illegal or against the rules, many people will comply because the risk of rule-breaking isn't worthwhile to them. There's some "evidence" for you, which you really shouldn't need -- you must be young if you haven't figured this out yet.
Believe it or not, there are some people with discipline and emotional control out there. Romance is not an unstoppable force (despite what Hollywood wants you to believe). In the presence of a prohibition on office romance, parties who take their job seriously will employ personal restraint and refrain from engaging in office romance.
"Telling people they're not allowed to do something just makes them hide it" is a tired and frankly juvenile argument. Yes, it's true that in some cases, which, generally speaking, are fairly rare (depending on what you're prohibiting), people will continue to break the rules and hide it. But many people will choose to avoid the risk altogether and follow the rules.