Case Analysis - Spencer Owens & Co

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much autonomy and power to make decisions as some whites complained that these groups had taken on a policing and advocacy function.

The new management have not communicated their reasons for key decisions widely and appropriately.

The question 19 of the survey shows only sixty three percent of white senior management and seventy percent of their minority counterparts agreed that “ This company has been very successful in reaching its affirmative action goals.” These number should be much higher in a company that has worked so hard for including diversity as company’s wide goal.

Further exploring Exhibit 1, this survey showing us that issues look to be in program staff and that might be because of miscommunication between group. I can see big differences between answers of minority employees and white employees of program staff which shows again lack of proper communications as this group are working with clients and not connected with internal problems. Lack of communication leads to increase bias, and bias leads to dissension.

Alternatives/Solutions

Overall, from my analysis and evidences above, I believe that the root causes of Spencer Owens & Co, problems are Cultural differences, Stereotypes, the lack of Culture understanding and false perspectives of the management team. while making the diversity programs and affirmative action goals, the leaders of Spencer Owens have not put their best efforts in researching their employees’ cultures as well as their thoughts and need on the whole plan. Instead, they devise the program based on classic examples, classic trainings of those issues. That’s why the Sensitivity training or the group networking is considered superficial and there is not any benefit from them for organization. They even lead to more miscommunications between employees. Moreover, the managers only focus on promoting diversity in workforce without considering applying it to develop the company original goals of economic development. Furthermore, the organization wanted to be recognized as the pioneer of corporate diversification in their respective industry and they thought through the use of an aggressive minority hiring program would lead to company’s diversification but diversity performance should also be followed up through the hiring process, by monitoring system and having feedback tools like suggestion box.

Action Plan

What should Richards do to turn things around? Therefore, to change the situation, Spencer Owens’s leaders need to rebuild its purpose and the original goal of ‘foreign and economic development’ and widely communicate it. Richards and her managing team should be supportive and openly communicate these purpose. They need to educate and train entire company on the mission of the company at affirmative action program. Richards should effectively and clearly communicate the reasons of her decision regarding hiring, promotion, and firing to avoid the misunderstanding and problem that they have in the current system. Effective communication is “sending and receiving meaning as it was intended.” Richards and her team need to “ Bridging to Communicate Across Differences” The key to bridging is to prevent miscommunication. There are three steps to building a strong bridge in a diverse team: Prepare(make a motivated and confidence team) , Decenter( knowing about each other’s differences and applying it to adapt their own behavior and thinking and suspending judgment), and Recenter(s finding or developing shared ground upon which to build a new basis of interacting.)(Distefano & Maznevski, 2000) Other part, They need to be focused or a change, is in management of operations group as many disagreement to the survey questions occurred at the program and support staff level. Lots of issues seems to be heightened in that group. Spencer Owens & Co has a great diversity in the top management too, They could have these divers top managers as mentors for the minorities . A mentor could be helpful for the two program and support staff groups. They could explain and solve any miscommunication for their staff.

they claim, diversity will be good for business

Diversity should be understood as the varied perspectives and approaches to work that members of different identity groups bring not just increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation numbers.

Reference

Distefano & Maznevski, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 45–63, 2000