Turning around the culture in an organization is challenging in the best of time

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Turning around the culture in an organization is challenging in the best of times. Doing so is even harder in a situation where discrimination is a daily occurrence. BuyItNow.com was started by two 22-year-old entrepreneurs, Dave Freidman and Jack Johnston, who saw an opportunity early in the growth of the Internet to acquire overstock and discontinued items and make them available online to the public. This approach to selling could net a nice margin for the young company since they could forego the costs associated with retail sales. At first, the primary employees of the company, along with Dave and Jack, were their fraternity brothers. As the company grew, they continued the process of hiring from among their fraternity brothers and other close friends. After all, using this approach to hiring ensured they would continue to have “like-minded” people with whom to work. Over time the company was very successful in identifying the right product mix to attract a large following. Online auctions and other marketing techniques made BuyItNow.com a popular place for shopping for many customers. The success resulted in growth in the company and the need to hire more employees. When Dave and Jack actually started advertising for employees, they developed a coding system for their receptionist to use when applicants came into the warehouse and order center to pick up an application. This coding system enabled them to know the race, approximate age, and gender of applicants. And, just to mix it up, they included a few codes for attractiveness of the female applicants. Even with the company growth, now at 30 employees, Dave and Jack had not put into place formal processes for managing their human resources. They felt they were not yet large enough to need to do so. Now, Jack, who functions as the chief operating officer, has just received a call from the regional Equal Employment Opportunity Office informing him that a charge has been filed against him for discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and age. He is completely baffled and needs to understand what has happened and what his options are to defend against this charge.

1. Visit the EEOC website (http://www.eeoc.gov) and read what it says about discrimination on the basis of national origin and age. Prepare a short summary of the information. Based on the information provided in this chapter and your research, is it likely that discrimination may have occurred in this example? What is the evidence?

2. What would the company have to do to prove that their decisions were not discriminatory? Will it be easier to defend the charges of national origin or age? Justify your response.

3. Describe what Jack and Dave need to do now to make sure that there are no further charges of discrimination as the company continues to grow.

4. Develop an argument for why hiring a diverse workforce can lead to positive outcomes for BuyItNow.com. Relate your answer directly to the information in the case.

5. What advice regarding equal employment opportunity would you give to anyone wanting to start her own business?

Explanation / Answer

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