From The No Asshole Rule. See also The Little White Book: The No Asshole Rule. Forwarded by a well informed co-worker.

Factors to Consider When Calculation the Total Cost of Assholes to Your Organization
Damage to Victims and Witnesses

• Distractions from tasks – more effort devoted to avoiding nasty encounters, coping with them, and avoiding blame; less devoted to the task itself
• Reduced “psychological safety” and associated climate of fear undermines employee suggestions, risk taking, learning from own failures, learning from others’ failures, and forthright discussion – honesty may not be the best policy
• Loss of motivation and energy at work
• Stress-induced psychological and physical illness
• Possible impaired mental ability
• Prolonged bullying turns victims into assholes
• Absenteeism
• Turnover in response to abusive supervision and peers – plus more time spent while at work looking for new work

…
Wicked Consequences for Management:

• Time spent appeasing, calming, counseling or appeasing assholes
• Time spent “cooling out” employees (& others) who are victimized
• Time spent reorganizing departments and teams so that assholes do less damage
• Time spent interviewing, recruiting, and training…
• Management burnout…

Legal and HR Management Costs

• Anger management and other training to reform assholes
• Legal costs for inside and outside counsel
• Settlement fees and successful litigation by victims
• Settlement fess and successful litigation by alleged assholes (especially wrongful-termination cases)
• Compensation for internal and external consultants, executive coaches, and therapists
• Health insurance costs

When Assholes Reign: Negative Effects on Organizations

• Impaired improvement in established systems
• Reduced innovation and creativity
• Reduced cooperation and cohesion
• Reduced “discretionary” effort
• Dysfunctional internal cooperation
• Costs of victims’ retribution toward the organization
• Higher rates charged by outsiders – “combat pay” for working with assholes
• Impaired ability to attract the best and brightest.