MBA – Core

Division – E

Spencer Owens & Co – Business Communication and

Analysis
Group 9

Akshita Baldwa E009

Siddhesh Deshpande E019
Kartik Jain E029
Satvik Malhotra E039
Sovit Rastogi E049
Vishal Srivastava E059

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 Situation Analysis

Spencer Owens and Co is a consulting firm established in 1955 and working in

various domains such as economic development, community relations, economic
justice, youth support, immigration and conflict prevention amongst others which
involve most of client facing tasks and increasing diversity would help them enter
more markets. In order to increase racial and ethnic diversity and enhance
inclusion and shift to a Discrimination and Fairness Paradigm, an Affirmative
Action plan was introduced by ensuring that people are hired on the basis of
merit. This plan was implemented by various means. Sensitivity trainings were
given to create awareness, encourage inclusion and reduce prejudice. However,
absenteeism, mostly from the minority groups seems to indicate that those
groups felt that these trainings were only for whites and/or that they didn’t need
any such trainings. Network groups were created separately for gender and colour
for their development and enhancement. In recent times, these groups had
gotten involved in policing and advocacy, due to which the white employees felt
threatened and alienated. Hiring was decided to be only done on merit that
resulted in 50% of the 150 managers and professionals being female and 30% of
color. Promotion was also on the basis of merit as seen in the case of African
American Sahara Johnson who went up the ladder due to her merit but was fired
due to her unprofessional behavior. Even though her firing was met with
resistance, it was done in all fairness. The plan also laid out defined career goals
and gave focus to accountability. All these policies were not taken very positively
by the employees – both white and minority. White employees felt that the
quality of work was degrading and that the company was moving away from the
core strength – quantitative. On the other hand, the minority felt that their ideas
were disregarded and that the inclusion was only superficial – they feel tolerated
but not accepted as according to them all the decisions were still taken by white
leaders. The white managers were scared to give constructive feedback, fearing
that it would be taken as racism. The attitude of how the two groups are treated
within the organization seemed to vary across the hierarchy of the firm- from
support staff to senior management.

Recommendation

The firm needs to adopt learning and effectiveness paradigm where it uses the
background of employees to increase business and develop teams.

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 Action Plan

Short Term
 Having diversity training where people come and share their experiences,
so that people can get more open and comfortable with each other
 Shift from Using ‘Affirmative Action’ plan to the aim of Maintaining and
Developing Diversity

Long Term
 Allocate tasks/domains to employees where it would be beneficial for them
to have that diversity.
 Allow those people to create teams which are adapted to deal with those
special situations.
 Using diversity in order to increase business, and then building teams to
maintain those business.
4/5

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