The Tipping Point

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The Tipping Point

What can one consider being a tipping point in a situation. Is it when a situation changes from bad to worse? Could it be when it changes from good to better? Or could it be from when it changes from a bad situation and all of a sudden it turns around and becomes good? In my essay we are going to explore the tipping point from four different authors: Malcolm Gladwell, Mary G. King, Lynne M. Anderson, and Christine M. Pearson. From subject of: hush puppies, teen suicide, crime, smoking, incivility in the workplace and the black women’s breakthrough into clerical work. There could be many reasons why there were tipping

points in these topics, but I will shed light on how hush puppies, which was a fad, had life put back in them and they were popular once again. Teens began looking at suicide as being the alternative to whatever problem they had. How most smokers had a particular person from their childhood who they looked up to and they thought they were cool. Crime had declined in New York from 1980 to 1992 because of the theory of criminals have aged during that time period. Civility in the workplace is easily spiraled down to incivility and aggressive behaviors and finally black women’s breakthrough into the clerical work.

Malcolm Gladwell (staff writer for The New York) looks at what brought on the tipping point of Hush Puppies Shoes. Hush Puppies were trademarked in 1958 and in 1963. American’s were wearing Hush Puppies at a ratio of 1 in every 10 adults (www.Ehow.com). It was at a fashion shoot that two executives ran into a stylist from New York had told him that the Hush Puppies were coming back after many years of suffering. There were a few kids from the downtown Manhattan who weren’t ...

... middle of paper ...

...ne M., and Pearson, Christine M. “Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect

Incivility in the Workplace.” The Academy of Management Review 24. 3

(Jul.,1999): 452-471. Fri. 18 Mar. 2011.

King, Mary C. “Black Women’s Breakthrough into Clerical Work: An Occupational

Tipping Model. “Journal of Economic Issues 27.4 (Dec., 1993): 1097-1125.

Fri. 18 March 2011.

Greene, Stuart and Lidnisky, April “From The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can

Make a Big Difference.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: a

Text and Reader. New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2008. 432-446. Print.

Zimbardo, P.G. 1969. The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus

Deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In D. Levine (ED), Nebraska symposium

on motivation, 237-307. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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