Who owns employee survey?

The scenario: Highest level supervisor questions customer satisfaction with a particular policy. Immediate supervisor formulates and distributes survey to employees who directly serve customers to determine the frontline employees' perception of how policy is working. Immediate supervisor includes the survey questions in report back to highest level supervisor. Without the knowledge of the immediate supervisor, the highest level supervisor posts the survey questions to a listserv available to the segment of customers who questioned the policy.

The question(s): Does copyright law pertain? Does the author of the survey have exclusive right to use of the questions? Did immediate supervisor give tacit permission to distribute the survey elsewhere by including it verbatim in the report to the highest level supervisor?

Thanks for any light you can shed.

Rose Marie Parsons
Circulation Associate
Lommen Health Sciences Library
University of South Dakota School of Medicine 414 East Clark
Vermillion, South Dakota 57069
voice: 605-677-5348 fax: 605-677-5124 email:rmparson[_at_]sundance.usd.edu Received on Thu Apr 03 1997 - 16:00:22 GMT