Of employees cross the line into unfair favoritism? It crosses the line when an employee receives extra benefits that are perceived to result from a "special relationship" rather than from excelling in job performance. The actions in question can be pretty subtle, and the employees who feel slighted might be very good at hiding their true feelings. So it's also very easy for a manager to think there's no real problem, and often be totally oblivious to perceptions of favoritism.
But it is extremely important.
for management to be hyper-sensitive to this phone number library issue. While this is a universal business issue, I feel it is particularly important to high technology enterprises. High Tech companies, particularly startups, are built to move very fast. A big aspect of that speed advantage is often the company cultures, which tend to be open and collaborative. To ignore this issue in a High Tech business is to invite a loss of productivity, or in extreme circumstances, an actual destruction of the company culture that you've worked hard to create. Resentment can build quickly when favoritism is suspected. Resentment quickly becomes bitterness, and bitterness leads to all sorts of behavior which creates problems for companies.
Plummeting productivity,
divisions between the perceived "haves" and "have-nots", absenteeism and attrition. All of this has the potential to slow down or even stop a fast-moving, but embryonic, High Tech business very quickly I want to emphasize that it's the PERCEPTION of favoritism that does the damage. If there is actual favoritism, you can argue that management is just getting what they deserve. But I've seen proud managers who think that since they're not actually doing anything wrong, that should be enough--people will recognize it. They may also feel that they are too busy worrying about "real" business problems that are critical to the business in the near term, to be concerned with such. They'll let HR worry about such things. Or since they're not actually guilty, they believe that they just don't need to
Defend themselves further.
Lastly, they might think that since they're the "all powerful" boss, they can do what they want, and no one will challenge their the army, "the men" are kept separated from those known as "the officers." This comes from the idea that the leaders should not be too close to the individuals they command. In the military this makes a lot of logical sense because if you are too close, you might have a difficult time making decisions that could result in harm to someone. On the army base they have an officers club,
Where the officers eat and socialize.
On Sundays the facility is available to everyone, but there is a separate side for the officers and a separate side for the men. Side for the officers is generally a little fancier with better chairs and table arrangements. When someone becomes a general, it is said that they are sent to a special "general school" to learn how to behave as a general. One of the things they are taught in the general school is to not associate with other military individuals on a social basis in order to maintain a degree of separation between themselves and the people the command. (Of course some of them may let it go to their head and behave like that anyway, but that is a different issue.