Spencer Owens & Co.

introduction:

Spencer Owens & Co is an international consulting firm focused on foreign/domestic economic development. As of 1995, Spencer Owens was considered as having one of the most diverse staff in their industry of foreign and economic development. Not only was 50% of staff women, but also 30% of the firm were people of color. The leaders of the corporation committed themselves to hiring and promoting a diverse staff. The team at Spencer Owens was proud of their company’s commitment to fairness and equality and to encourage the employees to be “colorblind” to gender and ethnic differences. Along with this strategy, the firm also initiated sensitivity training and held follow-up discussions. Multiple employees commented, “Everyone is the same and treated the same.” With feedback from these trainings and discussions, the firm went a step further to create networking groups for women and people of color.

However, internal issues quickly escalated because of racial tension in the office, causing senior management to question the current organizational structure. Traditionally strong in hard-core quantitative analysis, but is now advocating for incorporation of interviewing and observation into data-gathering methods. White male managers are complaining about this – that the diversity program was adversely affecting quality of work. Also, long term white program staff complained that the organization was getting away from its original mission and values . Whites felt that the networking groups had taken on a policing and advocacy function, basically overstepping their bounds and having too much power in decision making, being too defensive of women and people of color, and felt they made decisions based on clout rather than facts. Whites felt that people of color unfairly called any firing of a person of color “racism.” This also factored into the way whites supervised people of color – because they worried that it was hard to provide constructive criticism to people of color without being called racist.

A survey was issued to senior management, People of color were critical of the affirmative action program, calling results superficial, and felt that minorities were merely tolerated rather than fully accepted (feeling like stepchildren in the organization). Minorities frequently felt their ideas were disregarded, and that if they brought up ideas that involved race and perception, then they were perceived as “racist.” Felt that whites’ biggest fear was being called a racist, citing fear of confrontation and missed opportunities for feedback.

root cause:

The issue of race relations at Spencer Owens was highlighted when the new executive director, Agnes Richards, fired an African-American manager in Human Resources. With that event, employees of color were quick to bring charges of racism against whites in the organization and also, increases the frequency of the complaints brought by the two networking groups (women employees and employees of color). those who considered her dismissal unjust and those who felt appropriate. any event involving people of color, like a dismissal or a constructive criticism, was considered racism, or The discrimination against black employees to get away with things that white employees can not get away with; The root causes of these problems is that the employees need to feel that the ways they may be different are understood and accepted. With the de-emphasis of sensitivity trainings and follow-up discussions, the team became isolated in their views on diversity versus affirmative action goals.

At Spencer Owens, there is a stereotype threat in which white managers are in fear of supervising people of color in that “any constructive feedback could be perceived as being criticized and subsequently being called a racist.” Lastly, interviews and developed surveys to better understand the opinions of the staff in order to get to the root cause(s) of why tensions were on the rise.

The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences. These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

All these benefits can lead to increase the productivity and effectiveness of a company if the communication and cooperation between the workforces are successfully achieved. Otherwise, if there are communication issues, resistance to change or even an ill defined strategy, diverse teams can lead to worst performances and lower levels of effectiveness. Low Morale, ambiguity, conflict, tension, confusion and slowly decision making are some of the many problems that diversity can brings to an organization. In fact, workforce diversity isn’t a competitive organizational strength unless it’s effectively managed. Having many different individuals in the same workforce make it difficult to have one shared purpose, and consequentially to have an efficient process. Diversity can reduce the cohesiveness of the group and result in increased employee absenteeism and turnover (Tsui, Egan & O’Reilly, 1992). Generally, greater diversity is associated with lower quality because it places lower performing people in positions for which they are not suited. (Rothman, Lipset & Nevitte, 2003). The benefits and the costs of diversity are not the same for every company or neither a stated fact. Top managers need to think carefully about all these effects before implementing a diversity strategy. It is not enough to “play fair” and “act political right”, it takes much more than that.

What needs to change at Spencer Owens to address racial issues?

the firm committed to fairness and equality and encouraged people to ignore gender or ethnic differences. But, by trying to be a “happy family” and trying to treat everyone the same way, resulted in people being repressed or afraid of exposing their feedback and critics to other colleagues.