The No Asshole Rule

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The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't is a book by Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton. He initially wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review, published in Breakthrough Ideas for 2004. Following the essay, he received more than one thousand emails and testimonies. Among other reasons disclosed in another article published at the Harvard Business Review, these letters led him to write the book, which sold more than 115,000 copies and won the Quill Award for best business book in 2007. The theme of the book is that workplace bullying worsens morale and productivity. To screen out the toxic staff, it suggests the "no asshole rule". The author insists upon use of the word asshole since other words such as bully or jerk "do not convey the same degree of awfulness". In terms of using the word in the book's title, he said "There's an emotional reaction to a dirty title. You have a choice between being offensive and being ignored."

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