MGT 312T Wk 2 – Apply Individual Differences

LeasePlan Effectively Manages Diversity

The term, glass ceiling, was used to represent an absolute barrier or solid roadblock that prevented women from advancing to higher-level positions. The ceiling resulted in women finding themselves stuck in lower-level jobs, ones that did not have profit and loss responsibility, and jobs with less visibility, power, and influence. This scenario is changing. This case illustrates the impact motivated leadership and changing company policies can have on gender diversity in the workplace. According to the United States Department of Labor, compared to women comprising 21 percent of the workforce in 1920, women comprised nearly half of the workforce in the United States in 2013, making gender diversity issues more and more important. This activity asks you to identify and apply your knowledge of such aspects of diversity.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

In 2003, the representatives of LeasePlan USA’s top customers were mostly women, as was the majority of the company’s employees. However, men represented a large majority of top managers at the company, reflecting the old-boys network type culture that dominated the fleet industry. New leadership decided to change this and provided career counseling to women, revised reward systems to focus on performance instead of seniority, and replaced some existing managers. Two years ago, only one of seven top executives was a woman. Now, three of the top eight executives are women.

The company’s new chief executive claims that these changes are motivated by strategy rather than political correctness. He says, “LeasePlan doesn’t build anything…Our sustainable competitive advantages are people.” LeasePlan now also implements a development program catered specifically for female employees. The program includes skills assessments, career guidance, communications, brand building, and panel discussions with female executives from other companies.

LeasePlan’s efforts have yielded very positive results in a short period of time. For example, a 2006 survey showed that 35 percent of women agreed that “management supports my efforts to manage my career,” which was improved the following year to 47 percent. A growing percentage of women also feel that their opportunities are growing—increased to 30 percent from 22 percent.

Gerri Patton, Director of Client Activation, says the program helped her become more confident and outspoken. The 23-year LeasePlan veteran encourages her female subordinates to apply. “I wish I would have done that program 10 or 15 years ago,” she says. “There’s no telling where I would be…The sky would’ve been the limit.”

According to Eagly and Carli, and also supported by subsequent data analysis by the textbook authors, women have broken through the glass ceiling. Based on what you have read in the case, which of the following trends in gender diversity appears to be most supported by the outcomes of LeasePlan’s program changes?

Multiple Choice

Educational attainment—women earned the majority of bachelor’s and master’s degrees from 2006 through 2012.

Increases in seats on boards of directors—in Fortune 550 firms up to 16.6 percent in 2013 from only 9.6 percent in 1995.

Leadership positions—in educational institutions in 2010, women represented 18.7 percent of college presidents and 29.9 percent of board members.

Court Appointments—in federal court in 2013, women received 32 percent and 30 percent respectively of appointments to federal courts of appeals and US district court judge positions.

None of these

Which of Thomas’s generic action options for managing diversity is most illustrated in the case?

Multiple Choice

Suppress

Isolate

Deny

Include/exclude

Tolerate

Based on the information in the case, which of the following barriers and challenges to managing diversity that were identified in the text appear to have been present at LeasePlan?

Multiple Choice

An unsupportive or hostile work environment

Poor career planning

A negative diversity climate

Inaccurate stereotypes

Difficulty in balancing career and family issues

Todd McFarlane—Personality and Perception

Perceptions have both positive and negative implications at work. For example, our perceptions of groups of people (e.g., stereotypes) can be very problematic as generalizing the attributes of the group to any given individual, or vice versa, is often inaccurate. On the other hand, positive expectations of others can enhance their performance. And the attributions we make regarding the causes of people’s performance (good or bad) are often consequential for managers, employees, and employers. This exercise asks you to apply your knowledge of perceptions and attributions to the McFarlane Companies video.

This activity is important because as a manager, your perceptions of others and attributions for their behavior profoundly affect both your interactions with others and your decisions about others.

The goal of this exercise is to for you to identify how perceptions, stereotypes, and attributions affect business.

Click the ► button to watch the video. Then, answer the questions that follow.

Which type of stereotype is described in the beginning of the video?

Multiple Choice

• Gender

Age

• Race
• Occupational
• Ethnic

Todd McFarlane and others highlighted Todd’s business skills, his artistic abilities, and his success in various types of media. Which of the dimensions of behavior from Kelley’s Model of Attribution is reflected here?

Multiple Choice

• Distinctiveness
• Consistency
• Stereotype
• Diversity
• Consensus

Clearly Todd McFarlane has achieved a great deal of success both personally and in his company. However, it is also possible that he attributes all of his good fortune to his own efforts while placing the blame for any bad fortune on others. If this is accurate, then this would be an example of

Multiple Choice

• cognitive load.
• category-based knowledge.
• stereotyping.
• self-serving bias.
• fundamental attribution bias.

A banker who has done several deals with Todd McFarlane and the McFarlane Company and knew that the company tends to be fiscally conservative would be less likely to stereotype Todd McFarlane as a risky, artistic type. Which perceiver characteristic best explains this outcome?

Multiple Choice

• Direction of gaze
• Needs and goals
• Experience with target
• Gender and emotional status

White, Male, and Asian: The Diversity Profile of Technology Companies

Is setting diversity goals in hiring fair? This is an important question to explore, especially in industries dominated by a particular race, gender, or ethnic group. This activity is important because it shows how challenging managing diversity can be, especially in industries like technology.

The goal of this exercise is to examine what it means to “manage diversity,” and to explore which programs might actually decrease, rather than increase (or at the very least balance) workplace diversity.

Read the case about the typical diversity profile of technology companies. Then, using the three-step problem-solving approach, answer the questions that follow.

Managing diversity is a hot topic among technology companies, some of which have started to display transparency by publishing their diversity profiles.

Google’s diversity report showed its workforce is 70 percent male and 30 percent female. Ethnicity data for its U.S. workforce indicated 61 percent white, 30 percent Asian, 4 percent of two or more races, 3 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black, and 1 percent other. This pattern is similar to those of Apple (30 percent female and 55 percent white, and U.S. ethnicity data showing 15 percent Asian, 11 percent Hispanic, 7 percent black, 2 percent of two or more races, 1 percent other, and 9 percent undeclared) and Facebook (31 percent female, and U.S. ethnicity data of more than half white, 41 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent black).1

Executives within the technology industry have started to implement a variety of programs and policies to change the demographic profiles of their companies. For example, Intel established a 2015 hiring goal of 40 percent new hires from diverse backgrounds and 22.7 percent of technical employees who are female. Pinterest established a 2016 goal to have 30 percent of new engineering hires in engineering roles be female and 8 percent from underrepresented ethnic minorities.2

Is setting diversity hiring goals fair? While companies that set them note they are not meant to be quotas, some managers may perceive them that way. This would likely create feelings of reverse discrimination, fueling resistance to hiring diverse employees.

What has led to the skewed demographics at technology companies? Some experts believe the root cause goes back to patterns and norms in elementary and high school, where girls are not encouraged to focus on the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math). If this is true, female high-school students are not developing the proficiency that would help them major in STEM subjects in college. Further, a writer for Forbes concluded that an unconscious bias exits “that science and math are typically ‘male’ fields while humanities are primarily ‘female’ fields, and these stereotypes further inhibit girls’ likelihood of cultivating an interest in math and science.”3

A related issue is the “information gap.” High-school students simply do not know which jobs are in high demand. For example, research shows that 24 percent of high-school seniors “have no idea of what career they want to pursue. Of high school seniors who have pinpointed a desired profession, 23 percent said they made their career choice based on something they saw on TV or in a movie.”4 This is a problem because TV shows often depict technology-oriented people as geeky males. Who wants to be a geek?

Others claim the industry has a pipeline problem. In other words, not enough females and minorities are majoring in STEM subjects in college. Statistics conflict on this subject. Some data indicate that females earn fewer than 20 percent of college degrees in computer science, even though they achieve the majority of bachelor’s degrees in the United States.5 In contrast, other studies show that there is not a pipeline issue. According to a Forbes writer Bonnie Marcus, there is “an equal number of high-school girls and boys participating in STEM electives.” Marcus also notes that 50 percent of the introductory computer science students at Stanford and Berkeley are women.6 A USA study further showed that “top universities graduate black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering students at twice the rate that leading technology companies hire them.”7 There must be some reason these students are not being hired.

If the above data are accurate, then it is possible that companies have a systemic problem based on hiring managers’ beliefs, stereotypes, or unconscious biases. This occurred at Pinterest, for example, when it tried to increase the number of women and minorities being hired. Although recruiters found qualified applicants “from nontraditional backgrounds, managers often continued to prioritize people from places like Stanford and MIT, which have less broad student bodies. And while Adam Ward, Pinterest’s head of recruiting, and Abby Maldonado, its diversity-programs specialist, had encouraged colleagues to pass along résumés form a range of candidates, most of the referrals were still white or Asian,” according to FastCompany.8 Pinterest founder Evan Sharp believes technology companies may not be giving diversity the same type of attention it does to product development initiatives.

There may also be more overt causes of the underrepresentation of female and minority tech employees. Consider results from an interview study of 716 women who had held technology positions. These women left the industry after seven years, and 27 percent cited “discomfort working in these companies.” Other top reasons were perceived discrimination in regard to gender, race, or sexual orientation, lack of flexible hours, and unsupportive work environments.9

Could something as subtle as gender-based communication contribute to the problem? The answer is yes according to a recent report presented in Fortune. A study of 1,100 technology résumés from 512 men and 588 women uncovered gender-related differences that may affect a recruiter’s perceptions. For example, “women’s résumés are longer, but shorter on details. … Yet when it comes to providing details about previous jobs, the men present far more specific content than the women do,” according to the Fortune report. Women were also found to “lead with their credentials and include more personal background. On average, the women’s résumés cite seven personal distinctions apiece, while the men’s cite four.” Overall, women tend to use more narrative while men are more precise about their experiences.10

Assume you are a senior leader at a technology company. What does the information in this case tell you about managing diversity?

What is the main problem here for technology companies?

Multiple Choice

• Hostile work environments
• Ambiguous performance evaluations
• Skewed employee demographics

Lack of ethics

• Poor growth

Which of the following is NOT a cause of workforce composition issues at technology companies?

Multiple Choice

• Unconscious biases
• Gender-based communication
• Difference in abilities between males and females
• The “information gap” for high school students
• Patterns and norms when it comes to studying STEM subjects prior to college

What can be a strong reason that top universities graduate black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering students at twice the rate that leading technology companies hire them?

Multiple Choice

• Inadequate credentials
• Lack of ability
• Lack of skills
• Not enough applicants
• Hiring manager bias

If technology companies attempt to implement an affirmative-action type of diversity program, in order to solve the problem, which of the following would probably NOT result?

Multiple Choice

Management may feel as if reverse-discrimination is occurring.

• Applicants who benefit from the program may feel negatively stigmatized as unqualified or incompetent.
• New opportunities would open for applicants that otherwise would not have been considered.
• Management would be able to effectively manage diversity.
• The program would not be supported by people who hold racist or sexist attitudes.