· Practical Op-Amps – Understanding Op Amp Parameters1. Search t.docx

· Practical Op-Amps – Understanding Op Amp Parameters
1. Search the Internet for a LM741 datasheet. texas Instruments
can be a good source.
2. Answer the following questions:
1. Given a signal with a peak voltage of 10V and a frequency of
2kHz, calculate the SR for Figure A.4, pg. 212.
2. Given a total noise voltage of ent = 1mV, current noise In =
2pA/sqrt(Hz), and a source resistance Rs = 2kohms, calculate
the voltage noise, Vn parameter. Requires solving for Vn in
equation (A.3), pg. 207.
3. Given that the maximum frequency without distortion fmax is
defined as fmax = SR/2πVp, calculate SR with fmax = 3kHz,
and Vpp = 15.
4. Review the “LM741 datasheet” in your course materials and
provide the following information:
1. Supply voltage range
2. Input Offset Voltage (typical) and (max)
3. Large Signal Voltage Gain (min) and (typical)
4. CMRR (typical)
5. SVRR (typical)
6. SR (typical)
7. How many BJT’s comprise the internal circuitry?
3. Scan all work and save it for upload with the title:
“HW3_StudentID”, with your student id substituted in the file
name. Show all work for full credit.
4. Upload file “HW3_StudentID”
INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND
APPLYING OB Demographics are a key input that affects
important OB processes, most particularly perceptions, which in
turn affect the individual-level outcome of well-
being/flourishing and the organizational outcomes of being an
employer of choice and corporate reputation. Page 111 winning

at work PERCEPTION PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN GETTING A
JOB A recent survey of 400 humanresource professionals
uncovered results that are important to college graduates
looking for a job. The overwhelming conclusion? That “entry-
level workers are an entitled, unprofessional bunch.” About 45
percent of the HR professionals believed that the work ethic of
new college graduates had slipped in the past five years.1 Let’s
consider how you can avoid being perceived so negatively.
IMPRESSIONS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA The Internet is a gold
mine of information for recruiters, and some of it creates a bad
impression. Photos of drunken behavior, or rants with foul
language or that “bash” your employer, won’t improve a
recruiter’s perception. You need to be careful about your online
presence because approximately 20 percent of all organizations
browse sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to
help screen employees. Consider the experience of Pete Maulik,
chief strategy officer at Fahrenheit 212. Maulik was ready to
make an offer to an applicant, but first decided to check out the
man’s LinkedIn profile—and decided that the applicant was not
a team player. “He took credit for everything short of splitting
the atom,” Mr. Maulik said. “Everything was ‘I did this.’ He
seemed like a lone wolf. He did everything himself.” Maulik
recalls another good applicant who used his Twitter account “to
disparage just about every new innovation in the marketplace.”
Maulik concluded that the applicant “was much more
comfortable as the critic than the collaborative creator.”2 This
candidate was not hired either. IMPRESSIONS FROM YOUR
RÉSUMÉ Typos, gaps in employment, and too much work
history can leave negative impressions. Career coach Cheryl
Palmer notes that using your employer’s e-mail sends the
message to potential employers “that the job seekers will not
hesitate to use their equipment for personal use.”3
RECOMMENDED TIPS The following suggestions can help you
manage the impression you are sending when applying for a job.
Do’s •Adjust your Facebook privacy settings so potential
employers can’t see your party photos. •Use Twitter and

LinkedIn to play up your professional interests (like posting
relevant news articles). •Cross-check your résumé and LinkedIn
profile to make sure there aren’t discrepancies. Don’ts •Don’t
badmouth a current or former employer, colleague, or company.
•Avoid using foul language and making negative remarks.
•Don’t post anything that might be perceived as racist, biased,
or illegal.4 Note: We cover impression management in more
depth in Chapter 12. FOR YOUWHAT’S AHEAD IN THIS
CHAPTER We want to help you enhance your understanding of
the perceptual process so you won’t fall victim to common
perceptual errors. We especially want to show you how
perception influences the manner in which managers manage
diversity. We discuss two of the outcomes of this perceptual
process: stereotypes and causal attributions. Diversity should
matter to you because how a business deals with diversity
affects how you are perceived as an individual. Diversity should
matter to the organization because it means taking advantage of
the fullest range of human skill and talent. And we discuss
barriers and challenges to managing diversity, and the practices
organizations use to do so. Page 112 4.1A SOCIAL
INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL OF PERCEPTION
MAJOR QUESTION How does the perception process affect the
quality of my decisions and interpersonal relationships? THE
BIGGER PICTURE Understanding the mechanics of how you
process information will help you see how perception can
impact a variety of important processes and outcomes in OB, as
indicated in the Integrative Framework. You’re driving on a
winding mountain road at dusk and suddenly you see something
in the road. Is the object an animal, a rock, or a person? Should
you stop, or just maneuver around it? Or you’re in a team
meeting and one of your teammates makes a negative statement
about your work. Is the person being political or just having a
bad day? Your mind is quickly trying to answer these questions
before you make a response. Perception is key to resolving the
above situations. Perception is a cognitive process that enables
us to interpret and understand our surroundings. Recognition of

objects is one of this process’s major functions. For example,
both people and animals recognize familiar objects in their
environments. You would recognize that the object in the road
was a deer; dogs and cats can recognize their food dishes.
People must recognize objects to meaningfully interact with
their environment. But since organizational behavior’s (OB’s)
principal focus is on people, the following discussion
emphasizes social perception rather than object perception. (See
the Example box on the perception of apologies in business.)
EXAMPLEHow Perception of Apologies Differs in the United
States and Japan The frequency and meaning of apologies like
“I’m sorry” vary around the world, particularly between
Americans and Japanese. A recent study revealed that US
students apologized 4.51 times a week while Japanese students
used some type of apology 11.05 times a week. The findings
highlight the importance of social perception. WHAT DOES AN
APOLOGY MEAN?“Americans see an apology as an admission
of wrongdoing, whereas Japanese see it as an expression of
eagerness to repair a damaged relationship, with no culpability
necessarily implied.” American students thus are less likely to
apologize because they view it as an admission of guilt. This is
consistent with the “psychological tendency among Westerners
to attribute events to individuals’ actions.”5 In contrast,
Japanese students apologized even when they were not
responsible. This is partly due to the fact that Asian countries
possess more collective or group-oriented values that focus on
doing things for the greater good over self-interests. NEVER
APOLOGIZE AND NEVER EXPLAINAn old John Ford film,
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, followed a cavalry brigade in the
1800s posted in the Indian Territory; it popularized a strand of
American individualism in a phrase you may still hear today.
John Wayne’s character says, “Never apologize and never
explain. It’s a sign of weakness.” But apologies do have a role
in American business. THE BUSINESS IMPACT OF
APOLOGIESApologizing can right legitimate wrongs, and it
can save money for organizations. A study of medical

malpractice suits revealed that 16 percent would not have sued
had the hospital offered an apology. The University of Michigan
Medical Center put these results to practice and “adopted a
policy of ‘full disclosure for medical errors,’ including an
apology; its rate of lawsuits has since dropped 65 percent.”6
Page 113 “Apologizing by admitting a mistake—to co-workers,
employees, customers, clients, the public at large—tends to gain
credibility and generate confidence in one’s leadership,” says
Linda Stamato, of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict
Resolution. She cites the apology by David Neeleman, chairman
of Jet Blue, attempting to restore consumer trust, in his letter of
apology to those ill-served by the air carrier during the havoc of
winter storms in 2006. Although business leaders feel
ambivalent about apologizing, Stamato says, “Taking
responsibility for an error earns the privilege of being forgiven,
and thus granted a second chance. Employees may well be
relieved—after all, who has not made a mistake?—and more
willing to help make the corrective action work better.”7 YOUR
THOUGHTS? 1.Do you think it pays to apologize even if you
did not do something wrong? Explain. 2.What is your opinion
about hospitals apologizing for medical errors? 3.What are some
right ways and wrong ways to apologize in business settings?
Perception is an important process in the Integrative Framework
for Understanding and Applying OB because it affects our
actions and decisions. For example, The Wall Street Journal
reported on a recent study that suggested “men with shaved
heads are perceived to be more masculine, dominant and, in
some cases, to have greater leadership potential than those with
longer locks or with thinning hair.”8 Clearly, it is foolish to
make hiring decisions based on the amount of hair on someone’s
head. But if you know the perceptual error, you can avoid it!
You can learn to avoid perceptual errors by understanding the
process that guides perception. Figure 4.1 illustrates four stages
of perception. Three of the stages—selective
attention/comprehension, encoding and simplification, and
storage and retention—describe how specific social information

is observed and stored in memory. The fourth and final stage,
retrieval and response, involves turning mental representations
into real-world judgments and decisions. We’ll look at the four
stages of social perception by following a simple everyday
example. Suppose you were thinking of taking a course in, say,
personal finance. Three professors teach the same course, using
different types of instruction and testing procedures. Through
personal experience, you now prefer good professors who rely
on the case method of instruction and essay tests. According to
social perception theory, you would likely arrive at a decision
regarding which course to take based on the instructor,
following the steps outlined in the following sections. Stage 1:
Selective Attention/Comprehension People are constantly
bombarded by physical and social stimuli in the environment.
To avoid being overwhelmed, they selectively perceive subsets
of environmental stimuli. This is where attention plays a role.
Attention is the process of becoming consciously aware of
something or someone. The object of attention can come from
the environment or from memory. Research has shown that
people tend to pay attention to salient stimuli. FIGURE
4.1SOCIAL PERCEPTION: A SOCIAL INFORMATION
PROCESSING MODEL SOURCE: From R. Kreitner and A.
Kinicki, Organizational Behavior, 10th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2013,
p. 181. Reprinted with permission of McGraw-Hill Education.
Page 114 Salient StimuliSomething is salient when it stands out
from its context. A 250-pound man would certainly be salient in
a women’s aerobics class but not at a meeting of the National
Football League Players’ Association. One’s needs and goals
often dictate which stimuli are salient. For a driver whose gas
gauge shows empty, an Exxon or Shell sign is more salient than
a McDonald’s or Burger King sign. Moreover, research shows
that people tend to find negative information more salient than
positive information. This leads to a negativity bias.9 This bias
helps explain the gawking factor that slows traffic to a crawl
following a car accident, and it can affect employee behavior at
work. Our ExampleYou begin your search for the “right”

personal finance professor by asking friends who have taken
classes from the three available professors. You also may
interview the various professors who teach the class to gather
still more relevant information. In Figure 4.1, all the
information you obtain shows as competing environmental
stimuli labeled A through F. You interpret and categorize your
notes. Stage 2: Encoding and Simplification Memory does not
store observed information in its original form; encoding is
required. Our brains interpret or translate raw information into
mental representations. To accomplish this, perceivers assign
pieces of information to cognitive categories. “By category we
mean a number of objects that are considered equivalent.
Categories are generally designated by names, e.g., dog,
animal.”10 Imagine the memory this individual has for
parachuting off a mountain. He probably remembers the day, the
weather, and the thrill of it all. Details from highly salient
events like this are more likely to be remembered. Do you have
any desire to engage in this activity? We don’t! In social
information processing theory, a particular category builds on a
schema. A schema represents a person’s mental picture or
summary of a particular event or type of stimulus. For example,
picture a sports car. Does the picture show a smaller vehicle
with two doors? Is it red? If you answered yes, you would tend
to classify all small, two-door, fire-engine-red vehicles as
sports cars because this type of car possesses characteristics
that are consistent with your sports car schema. We interpret
and evaluate people, events, and objects by comparing their
characteristics with information contained in schemata (the
plural of schema). EncodingWe use encoding to interpret and
evaluate our environment, using schemata and cognitive
categories. We also use encoding and schemata to help us
organize and remember information. SimplificationRelying on
encoding helps us to simplify what might be a bewildering
range of inputs. Encoding and schemata make the world more
manageable. Our ExampleLet’s say you simplify by focusing on
categories most salient to you: the method of instruction, testing

procedures, and past grade distributions. Figure 4.1 shows these
three salient pieces of information as lines A, C, and F. Having
collected relevant information about the three personal finance
professors and their approaches, you compare this information
with other details contained in schemata. This comparison leads
you to form an impression of what each professor’s course
might be like. In turn, the relevant information (lines A, C, and
F in Figure 4.1) are passed along to the third stage. Stage 3:
Storage and Retention Page 115 Long-term memory is like an
apartment complex consisting of separate units connected to
common areas. The different people in each apartment will
sometimes interact. In addition, large apartment complexes have
different wings, separately identifiable but connected. Long-
term memory similarly consists of separate but related
categories. Specifically, long-term memory comprises three
compartments (or wings), one each for events, semantic
materials, and people.11 Event MemoryThis compartment
includes categories with information about both specific events
(relying on unique details) and general events (relying on
schemata). These memories describe appropriate sequences of
events in well-known situations, such as going to a restaurant,
going on a job interview, going to a food store, or going to a
movie. Semantic MemorySemantic memory refers to general
knowledge about the world, as a kind of mental dictionary of
concepts. Each concept includes a definition (e.g., a good
leader) and associated traits (outgoing), emotional states
(happy), physical characteristics (tall), and behaviors (works
hard). Concepts in semantic memory are stored as schemata;
such schemata are often subject to cultural differences. Person
MemoryCategories within this compartment supply information
about a single individual (your professor) or groups of people
(professors). You are more likely to remember information
about a person, an event, or an advertisement if it contains
characteristics that are similar to something stored in the
compartments of memory. Our ExampleAs the time draws near
for you to decide which personal finance professor to choose,

your schemata of them are stored in the three categories of
long-term memory. These schemata are available for immediate
retrieval and comparison. Stage 4: Retrieval and Response
People retrieve information from memory when they make
judgments and decisions. How Judgments ComeUltimately
judgments and decisions come about in one of two ways. Either
we draw on, interpret, and integrate categorical information
stored in long-term memory or we retrieve a summary judgment
that was already made. Do you think that this woman may have
any implicit cognitions that are affecting her dinner selection?
Because she is drinking white wine, maybe this choice already
activated a preference for fish or chicken. Do implicit
cognitions affect your choices when dining out? Our
ExampleOn registration day you have to choose which professor
to take for personal finance. After retrieving your schemata-
based impressions from memory, you select a good professor
who uses the case method and gives essay tests (line C in Figure
4.1). In contrast, you may choose your preferred professor by
simply recalling the decision you made two weeks ago.
Managerial Implications Social cognition is the window through
which we all observe, interpret, and prepare our responses to
people and events. A wide variety of managerial activities,
organizational processes, and quality-of-life issues are thus
affected by perception. We’ll touch on hiring, performance
appraisal, and leadership. HiringInterviewers make hiring
decisions based on their impression of how an applicant fits the
perceived requirements of a job. Unfortunately, many of these
decisions are made on the basis of implicit cognition. Implicit
cognition represents any thoughts or beliefs that are
automatically activated from memory without our conscious
awareness. The existence of implicit cognition leads people to
make biased decisions without an understanding that it is
occurring.12 A recent study in the Netherlands demonstrated
that the odds of being rejected for job openings were four times
larger for Arabs than for Dutch applicants: The applicants were
equally qualified.13 Experts recommend two solutions for

reducing the biasing effect of implicit cognition. First,
managers can be trained to understand and reduce this type of
hidden bias. Second, bias can be reduced by using structured as
opposed to unstructured interviews, and by relying on
evaluations from multiple interviewers rather than just one or
two people. More and more companies are using virtual
interviews as a tool for reducing problems associated with
implicit cognition (see the Example box below). Page 116
EXAMPLEVirtual Interviews Can Improve the Accuracy of Job
Interviews and Reduce Costs A survey of managers from 500
companies revealed that 42 percent were using web-based video
interviews as one component of the hiring process. Ocean
Spray, a juice company in Massachusetts, is a good example.
The company sends applicants an e-mail link that contains
preset interview questions. The answers are recorded via
webcam. BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL
INTERVIEWSStandardization drives several benefits of virtual
interviews. Consistency. Video-enabled interviews standardize
the process, which in turn leads to more reliable evaluations.
For example, Walmart uses video interviews to help select
pharmacists. Walmart recruiters believe that these interviews
provide them with a better idea of how people will interact with
customers. T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant similarly uses video
interviews to select restaurant managers for the same reason.
Collaboration. Experts suggest that “recruiters use recorded or
live video interviews to foster collaboration around hiring
decisions. With more stakeholders participating—by logging on
to live interviews from multiple locations or leaving comments
for colleagues to read on recorded interviews—more input leads
to better candidate selection.” Saving Time and Money. Ocean
Spray was experiencing an average cost of $1,000 per candidate
for an in-person interview. Martin Mitchell, the company’s
manager of talent and diversity, said that “video interviews
eliminated these costs” and they allowed the company to
interview people more quickly while not forcing applicants to
take time off work to travel for an interview.14 YOUR

THOUGHTS? 1.The discussion you just read focuses on the
positive aspects of this approach; what are the negative aspects
of using video interviews? 2.How might you prepare for a video
interview? 3.If you were relying on the videos to select
candidates for a job, what would you look for? Performance
AppraisalFaulty schemata about good versus poor performance
can lead to inaccurate performance appraisals, which erode
morale. A study of 166 production employees indicated that
they trusted management more when they perceived that their
performance appraisals were accurate.15 Therefore, managers
must accurately identify and communicate the behavioral
characteristics and results they look for in good performance at
the beginning of a review cycle. Furthermore, because memory
for specific instances of employee performance deteriorates
over time, managers need a mechanism for accurately recalling
employee behavior. Research shows that individuals can be
trained to more accurately rate performance.16 (See Chapter 6
for techniques to overcome common perception errors in the
performance appraisal.) LeadershipResearch demonstrates that
employees’ evaluations of leader effectiveness are influenced
strongly by their schemata of good and poor leaders. For
example, a team of researchers found that in the employees’
schema, good leaders would exhibit these behaviors:
1.Assigning specific tasks to group members. 2.Telling others
that they had done well. 3.Setting specific goals for the group.
4.Letting other group members make decisions. 5.Trying to get
the group to work as a team. 6.Maintaining definite standards of
performance.17 Page 117 4.2STEREOTYPES MAJOR
QUESTION How can I use knowledge of stereotypes to make
better decisions and manage more effectively? THE BIGGER
PICTURE Don’t say you don’t stereotype; that’s how we
humans think. Stereotypes help us process information faster. If
you didn’t rely on stereotypes, the world would seem chaotic.
But stereotypes can also lead to bad decisions and undermine
personal relationships. Understanding stereotypes can save you
from such pitfalls. Stereotypes represent a key component of the

perception process because they are used during encoding. “A
stereotype is an individual’s set of beliefs about the
characteristics or attributes of a group.”18 Stereotypes are not
always negative. For example, the belief that engineers are good
at math is certainly part of a stereotype. Stereotypes may or
may not be accurate. Engineers may in fact be better at math
than the general population. Unfortunately, stereotypes can lead
to poor decisions. Specifically they can create barriers for
women, older individuals, people of color, and people with
disabilities, all while undermining loyalty and job satisfaction.
Examples follow. Gender. A summary of research revealed that:
•People often prefer male bosses. •Women have a harder time
being perceived as an effective leader. (The exception: Women
were seen as more effective than men only when the
organization faced a crisis and needed a turnaround.) •Women
of color are more negatively affected by sex-role stereotypes
than white women or men in general.19 Race. Studies of race-
based stereotypes also demonstrated that people of color
experienced more perceived discrimination, more racism-related
stress, and less psychological support than whites.20 Age.
Another example of an inaccurate stereotype is the belief that
older workers are less motivated, more resistant to change, less
trusting, less healthy, and more likely to have problems with
work–life balance. A recent study refuted all of these negative
beliefs about age.21 Stereotype Formation and Maintenance
Stereotyping is based on the following four-step process:
1.Categorization. We categorize people into groups according to
criteria (such as gender, age, race, and occupation).
2.Inferences. Next, we infer that all people within a particular
category possess the same traits or characteristics: women are
nurturing, older people have more job-related accidents, African
Americans are good athletes, and professors are absentminded.
Page 118 3.Expectations. We form expectations of others and
interpret their behavior according to our stereotypes.
4.Maintenance. We maintain stereotypes by: •Overestimating
the frequency of stereotypic behaviors exhibited by others.

•Incorrectly explaining expected and unexpected behaviors.
•Differentiating minority individuals from ourselves. Research
shows that it takes accurate information and motivation to
reduce the use of stereotypes.22 Managerial Challenges and
Recommendations The key managerial challenge is to reduce
the extent to which stereotypes influence decision making and
interpersonal processes throughout the organization. We suggest
three ways that this can be achieved. 1.Managers should educate
people about stereotypes and how they can influence our
behavior and decision making. We suspect that many people do
not understand how stereotypes unconsciously affect the
perception process. 2.Managers should create opportunities for
diverse employees to meet and work together in cooperative
groups of equal status. Social scientists believe that “quality”
interpersonal contact among mixed groups is the best way to
reduce stereotypes because it provides people with more
accurate data about the characteristics of other groups of
people. 3.Managers should encourage all employees to strive to
increase their awareness regarding stereotypes. Awareness helps
reduce the application of stereotypes when making decisions
and when interacting with others. What stands out in this photo?
Did you notice the man working from a wheelchair? Do you
think some people have negative stereotypes about people with
disabilities? Research shows that there is a tendency to have
such stereotypes. Page 119 4.3CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS
MAJOR QUESTION How do I tend to interpret employee
performance? THE BIGGER PICTURE Consciously or
unconsciously, you use causal attributions when you seek to
explain the causes of behavior. So do most managers. You can
avoid the fundamental attribution bias and self-serving bias if
you learn how they distort our interpretation of observed
behavior. Attribution theory is based on a simple premise:
People infer causes for observed behavior. Rightly or wrongly,
we constantly formulate cause-and-effect explanations for how
we and others behave. Formally defined, causal attributions are
suspected or inferred causes of behavior. Managers need to

understand how people formulate these attributions because the
attributions profoundly affect organizational behavior. Consider
the table below, in which how the manager understands the
observed behavior drives him to take very different actions.
OBSERVED BEHAVIOR MANAGER’S ATTRIBUTION
MANAGERIAL ACTION Fails to meet minimum standards
Lack of effort Reprimand Fails to meet minimum standards
Lack of ability Training Kelley’s Model of Attribution
Current models of attribution build on the pioneering work of
the late Fritz Heider. Heider, the founder of attribution theory,
who proposed that behavior can be attributed either to internal
factors within a person (such as ability) or to external factors
within the environment (such as a difficult task). Following
Heider’s work, Harold Kelley attempted to pinpoint specific
antecedents of internal and external attributions. Kelley
hypothesized that people make causal attributions by observing
three dimensions of behavior: consensus, distinctiveness, and
consistency.23 These dimensions vary independently, forming
various combinations and leading to differing attributions.
•Consensus compares an individual’s behavior with that of his
or her peers. There is high consensus when one acts like the rest
of the group and low consensus when one acts differently.
•Distinctiveness compares a person’s behavior on one task with
his or her behavior on other tasks. High distinctiveness means
the individual has performed the task in question in a
significantly different manner than he or she has performed
other tasks. •Consistency judges if the individual’s performance
on a given task is consistent over time. Low consistency is
undesirable for obvious reasons, and implies that a person is
unable to perform a certain task at some standard level. High
consistency implies that a person performs a certain task the
same way, with little or no variation over time. Page 120
FIGURE 4.2SAMPLE CHARTS OF CONSENSUS,
DISTINCTIVENESS, AND CONSISTENCY IN
PERFORMANCE SOURCE: From K. A. Brown, “Explaining
Group Poor Performance: An Attributional Analysis,” Academy

of Management Review, January 1984, p. 56. Copyright © 2001
by Academy of Management. Reprinted with permission of
Academy of Management, via Copyright Clearance Center.
Figure 4.2 provides sample charts of these dimensions in both
low and high incidence. So how do these three dimensions of
behavior lead to specific attributions? Kelley theorized that
people attribute behavior to either internal causes (personal
factors) or external causes (environmental factors) depending on
the ranking of consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency as
shown: While other combinations are possible, the two
options shown above have been most frequently studied. Note:
For another view of Kelley’s theory, return to Figure 4.2. In the
figure, we provided charts that, taken together, indicate Internal
Attributions on the left-hand side and External Attributions on
the right-hand side. Page 121 TAKE-AWAY APPLICATION—
TAAP 1.Think of someone who recently disappointed you. It
could be work-related (e.g., a peer did not complete part of a
group assignment) or personal (e.g., a friend failed to remember
your birthday). 2.Use Kelley’s model to identify whether the
unexpected behavior was due to internal or external causes.
3.Based on this attribution, what should you say or do to ensure
that this type of behavior does not happen again? Attributional
Tendencies Researchers have uncovered two attributional
tendencies that distort one’s interpretation of observed
behavior—fundamental attribution bias and self-serving bias.
Fundamental Attribution BiasThe fundamental attribution bias
reflects one’s tendency to attribute another person’s behavior to
his or her personal characteristics, as opposed to situational
factors. This bias causes perceivers to ignore important
environmental factors (again refer to the Integrative
Framework) that often significantly affect behavior. This leads
to inaccurate assessments of performance, which in turn foster
inappropriate responses to poor performance. Self-Serving
BiasThe self-serving bias represents one’s tendency to take
more personal responsibility for success than for failure. The
self-serving bias suggests employees will attribute their success

to internal factors (high ability or hard work) and their failures
to uncontrollable external factors (tough job, bad luck,
unproductive coworkers, or an unsympathetic boss). This
tendency plays out in all aspects of life. Managerial Application
and Implications Attribution models can explain how managers
handle poorly performing employees. One study revealed that
managers gave employees more immediate, frequent, and
negative feedback when they attributed their performance to low
effort. Another study indicates that managers tended to transfer
employees whose poor performance was attributed to a lack of
ability. These same managers also decided to take no immediate
action when poor performance was attributed to external factors
beyond an individual’s control.24 The preceding observations
offer useful lessons for all of us: •We tend to disproportionately
attribute behavior to internal causes. This can result in
inaccurate evaluations of performance, leading to reduced
employee motivation. The Integrative Framework for
Understanding and Applying OB offers a simple solution for
overcoming this tendency. You must remind yourself that
behavior and performance are functions of both person factors
and environmental characteristics. •Other attributional biases
may lead managers to take inappropriate actions. Such actions
could include promotions, transfers, layoffs, and so forth. This
can dampen motivation and performance. •An employee’s
attributions for his or her own performance have dramatic
effects on subsequent motivation, performance, and personal
attitudes such as self-esteem. For instance, people tend to give
up, develop lower expectations for future success, and
experience decreased self-esteem when they attribute failure to
a lack of ability. Employees are more likely to display high
performance and job satisfaction when they attribute success to
internal factors such as ability and effort.25 Page 122
4.4DEFINING AND MANAGING DIVERSITY MAJOR
QUESTION How does awareness about the layers of diversity
help organizations effectively manage diversity? THE BIGGER
PICTURE Like seashells on a beach, people come in a variety

of shapes, sizes, and colors. The global nature of your life
requires you to interact with various and diverse people. It is
important to be aware of the different layers of diversity and to
know the difference between affirmative action and managing
diversity. Do you have any preconceived notions regarding
diversity that are worth considering? Let’s take a reality check:
•Assumption: Gender diversity on boards of directors does not
impact firm performance. Wrong, says a study by the Credit
Suisse Research Institute. Results from a study of 2,400
companies from 2005 to 2012 showed that “companies with at
least one woman on the board would have outperformed stocks
with no women on the board by 26 percent over the course of
the last 6 years.”26 •Assumption: Organizations are having a
hard time finding qualified employees during the recessionary
period 2012–2013. Yes, according to a study of 3,400 HR
professionals. Two-thirds of the respondents said they had a
hard time filling specific job openings; the most difficult jobs to
fill included scientists, engineers, technicians and programmers,
nurses, doctors, and executives; the biggest skill gaps involved
critical thinking, problem solving, written communications,
work ethic, and leadership.27 •Assumption: Whites will
constitute the majority among US racial groups through 2050.
No, according to the Census Bureau. Today, whites represent 63
percent of the population and this will drop below 50 percent in
2043.28 The United States is becoming more diverse in its
gender, racial, educational, and age makeup—more working
parents, more nonwhite, older, and so on—and the consequences
are not always what you might expect. Demographics are the
statistical measurements of populations and their qualities (such
as age, race, gender, or income) over time. The study of
demographics helps us to better appreciate diversity and helps
managers to develop human resource policies and practices that
attract, retain, and develop qualified employees. In the
remainder of this chapter we hope to further your understanding
of diversity and its managerial challenges. Layers of Diversity
Diversity represents the multitude of individual differences and

similarities that exist among people, making it an input in the
Integrative Framework for Understanding and Applying OB. As
you will learn, however, managing diversity impacts a variety
of processes and outcomes within the Integrative Framework.
This is why the topic is so important to managers. Moreover,
diversity pertains to everybody. It is not an issue of age, race,
or gender; of being heterosexual, gay, or lesbian; or of being
Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, or Muslim. Diversity pertains to
the host of individual differences that make all of us unique and
different from others. Page 123 FIGURE 4.3THE FOUR
LAYERS OF DIVERSITY *Internal dimensions and external
dimensions are adapted from M. Locken and J. B. Rosener,
Workforce America! (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin,
1991). SOURCE: Reprinted from Diverse Teams at Work:
Capitalizing on the Power of Diversity by L. Gardenswartz and
A. Rowe, with permission of the Society for Human Resource
Management (SHRM). © 2003 SHRM. All rights reserved. Lee
Gardenswartz and Anita Rowe, a team of diversity experts,
identified four layers of diversity to help distinguish the
important ways in which people differ (see Figure 4.3). Taken
together, these layers define your personal identity and
influence how each of us sees the world. Figure 4.3 shows that
personality is at the center of the diversity wheel because it
represents a stable set of characteristics responsible for a
person’s identity. These are the dimensions of personality we
discussed in Chapter 3. The next layer of diversity includes
internal dimensions that are referred to as surface-level
dimensions of diversity. “Surface-level characteristics are those
that are quickly apparent to interactants, such as race, gender,
and age.”29 Because these characteristics are viewed as
unchangeable, they strongly influence our attitudes,
expectations, and assumptions about others, which, in turn,
influence our behavior. Take the encounter experienced by an
African-American woman in middle management while
vacationing at a resort. While she was sitting by the pool, “a
large 50-ish white male approached me and demanded that I get

him extra towels. I said, ‘Excuse me?’ He then said, ‘Oh, you
don’t work here,’ with no shred of embarrassment or apology in
his voice.”30 Stereotypes regarding one or more of the primary
dimensions of diversity most likely influenced this man’s
behavior toward the woman. Page 124 Figure 4.3 shows that the
next layer of diversity comprises external influences. They
represent individual differences that we have a greater ability to
influence or control. Examples include where you live today,
your religious affiliation, whether you are married and have
children, and your work experiences. These dimensions also
exert a significant influence on our perceptions, behavior, and
attitudes. The final layer of diversity includes organizational
dimensions such as seniority, job title and function, and work
location. Integrating these last two layers results in what is
called deep-level characteristics of diversity. “Deep-level
characteristics are those that take time to emerge in
interactions, such as attitudes, opinions, and values.”31 These
characteristics are definitely under our control. Affirmative
Action vs. Managing Diversity Affirmative action and managing
diversity are driven by very different values and goals. This
section highlights these differences. Affirmative ActionIt’s
important to understand that affirmative action is not a law in
and of itself. It is an outgrowth of equal employment
opportunity (EEO) legislation. The goal of this legislation is to
outlaw discrimination and to encourage organizations to
proactively prevent discrimination. Discrimination occurs when
employment decisions about an individual are due to reasons
not associated with performance or are not related to the job.
For example, organizations cannot discriminate on the basis of
race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, physical and
mental disabilities, and pregnancy. Affirmative action is an
artificial intervention aimed at giving management a chance to
correct an imbalance, injustice, mistake, or outright
discrimination that occurred in the past. Do the number of white
males stand out in this picture? Congress is sometimes
criticized for its lack of diversity. Congress is composed of 87

percent whites and 90 percent males. Page 125 Affirmative
action: •Can refer to both voluntary and mandatory programs.
•Does not legitimize quotas. Quotas are illegal. They can only
be imposed by judges who conclude that a company has engaged
in discriminatory practices. •Does not require companies to hire
unqualified people. •Has created tremendous opportunities for
women and minorities. •Does not foster the type of thinking that
is needed to manage diversity effectively. Is the last point
surprising? Research on affirmative action uncovered the
following divisive trends. Affirmative action plans are:
1.Perceived more negatively by white males than women and
minorities because white males see the plans as working against
their own self-interests. 2.Viewed more positively by people
who are liberals and Democrats than conservatives and
Republicans. 3.Not supported by people who possess racist or
sexist attitudes.32 4.Found to negatively affect the women and
minorities expected to benefit from them. Research
demonstrates that women and minorities, supposedly hired on
the basis of affirmative action, feel negatively stigmatized as
unqualified or incompetent.33 Helena Morrissey, CEO of
Newton Investment, is a good example on that last point. When
asked by a reporter to comment on women being selected to the
company board in order to fill a quota, she said, “I find quotas
condescending. I wouldn’t want to be part of a board because
I’m filling a quota.”34 Managing DiversityManaging diversity
enables people to perform up to their maximum potential. It
focuses on changing an organization’s culture and infrastructure
such that people provide the highest productivity possible. Ann
Morrison, a diversity expert, attempted to identify the type of
initiatives that companies use to manage diversity. She thus
conducted a study of 16 organizations that successfully
managed diversity. Her results uncovered three key strategies
for success: education, enforcement, and exposure. She
describes them as follows: •The educational component. This
“strategy has two thrusts: one is to prepare nontraditional
managers for increasingly responsible posts, and the other is to

help traditional managers overcome their prejudice in thinking
about and interacting with people who are of a different sex or
ethnicity.”35 •The enforcement component. This strategy “puts
teeth in diversity goals and encourages behavior change.”36
•The exposure component. This strategy exposes people to
others with different backgrounds and characteristics, which
“adds a more personal approach to diversity by helping
managers get to know and respect others who are different.”37
In summary, both consultants and academics believe that
organizations should strive to manage diversity rather than
being forced to use affirmative action. Page 126 4.5BUILDING
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR MANAGING DIVERSITY MAJOR
QUESTION What is the business rationale for managing
diversity? THE BIGGER PICTURE After reviewing the
business case for managing diversity, we also look at the
demographic changes occurring in the US workforce that make
the need to manage diversity all the more urgent. These
demographic changes have major implications for OB. The
growing diversity in the United States is not a business
initiative; it is a reality. Businesses can consciously choose to
manage diversity or get caught short by the demographic
changes facing the country. Business Rationale The rationale
for managing diversity is more than its legal, social, or moral
dimension. Quite simply, it’s good business. Managing diversity
gives the organization the ability to grow and maintain a
business in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Here’s
what William Weldon, former chairman and CEO of Johnson &
Johnson, said: Diversity and inclusion are part of the fabric of
our businesses and are vital to our future success worldwide.
The principles of diversity and inclusion are rooted in Our
Credo [the company’s values] and enhance our ability to deliver
products and services to advance the health and well-being of
people throughout the world. We cannot afford to reduce our
focus on these critical areas in any business climate.38
Companies like Johnson & Johnson and Sodexo understand and
endorse this proposition. Research also supports the logic of the

strategy. For example, a recent study of 739 retail stores found
support for the access-and-legitimacy perspective, defined in
the following manner: An access-and-legitimacy perspective on
diversity is based in recognition that the organization’s markets
and constituencies are culturally diverse. It therefore behooves
the organization to match the diversity in parts of its own
workforce as a way of gaining access to and legitimacy with
those markets and constituent groups.39 This particular study
discovered that customer satisfaction and employee productivity
were higher when the racio-ethnic composition of customers
matched that of store employees.40 These favorable results
were taken one step further by another team of researchers.
They wanted to know if customers would spend more money in
stores when they perceived themselves as similar to the sales
representatives. Results from 212 stores supported the idea that
customer-employee similarity leads to more spending.41 We
hope you get the point. It pays to manage diversity, but
organizations cannot use diversity as a strategic advantage if
employees fail to contribute their full talents, abilities,
motivation, and commitment. It is thus essential for an
organization to create an environment or culture that allows all
employees to reach their full potential. Managing diversity is a
critical component of creating such an environment. To help
you in this endeavor, we review demographic characteristics of
the US workforce and then discuss the managerial implications
of demographic diversity. Page 127 Companies increasingly are
trying to match the race of their workforce with that of their
customers. Here we see African-American customers being
helped by an employee of similar race. Why would customers
prefer to be helped by someone of a similar race? Trends in
Workforce Diversity How is the US workforce changing? Let’s
examine five categories—gender, race, education, sexual
orientation, and age. Women Break the Glass Ceiling—but
Navigate a LabyrinthCoined in 1986, the term glass ceiling is
used to represent an invisible but absolute barrier or solid
roadblock that prevents women from advancing to higher-level

positions. Various statistics support the existence of a glass
ceiling. The pay gap between men and women is one example.
In 2012, the median weekly income in full-time management,
professional, and related occupations was $1,328 for men in
contrast to $951 for women. This gap continued for MBA
graduates. Female graduates from top MBA programs earned 93
cents for every dollar earned by a male graduate, and the pay
gap tends to increase over time.42 Also, a recent WSJ/NBC
national poll revealed that 40 percent of the women reported
experiencing gender discrimination.43 Alice Eagly and her
colleague Linda Carli conducted a thorough investigation into
the organizational life of women and in 2007 published their
conclusions that women had finally broken through the glass
ceiling.44 We updated data originally reported in Eagly and
Carli’s book and that led to their conclusion. There were many
more female CEOs in 2014 (24 and 50 female CEOs within
Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 firms, respectively) and more
women in managerial, professional, and related occupations
than there were in the 1980s and 1990s.45 Statistics further
showed that women had made strides along several measures:
1.Educational attainment (women earned the majority of
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from 2006 through 2012).
2.Seats on boards of directors of Fortune 500 firms (9.6% in
1995 and 16.6% in 2013). 3.Leadership positions in educational
institutions (in 2010, women represented 18.7% of college
presidents and 29.9% of board members). 4.Federal court
appointments (in 2013, 32% and 30% of federal courts of
appeals and US district court judges, respectively, were
women).46 You can interpret the above statistics in one of two
ways. •No Change. On the one hand, you might see proof that
women remain underpaid and underrepresented in leadership
positions, victims of discriminatory organizational practices.
•Positive Change. Alternatively, you can agree with Eagly and
Carli’s conclusion that “men still have more authority and
higher wages, but women have been catching up. Because some
women have moved into the most elite leadership roles, absolute

barriers are a thing of the past.”47 Eagly and Carli propose that
a woman’s career follows a pattern more characteristic of
traveling through a labyrinth. They use the labyrinth metaphor
because they believe that a woman’s path to success is not
direct or simple, but rather contains twists, turns, and
obstructions, particularly for married women with children.
Racial Groups Face Their Own Glass Ceiling and Perceived
DiscriminationThe US workforce is becoming increasingly
diverse. Between 2012 and 2060, the Census Bureau predicts
the following changes in ethnic representation: •Growth: The
Asian population (from 5.1% to 8.2%). •Growth: The Hispanic
population (from 17% to 31%). •Mild growth: The African-
American population (from 13.1% to 14.7%). •Decline: Non-
Hispanic whites (from 63% to 43%).48 Page 128 A female’s
career is thought to resemble a labyrinth like this. Note the
twists and turns that are needed to get through this maze. Have
you experienced twists and turns in your career? All told, the
so-called minority groups will constitute approximately 57
percent of the workforce in 2060, according to the Census
Bureau.49 And yet, three additional trends suggest that current-
day minority groups are stalled at their own glass ceiling.
Smaller percentage in the professional class. Hispanics, or
Latinas/os, and African Americans have a smaller relative hold
on managerial and professional jobs within their racial
groupings. Women generally do better than men. The
percentages shown below are the percentages of professionals
within each category. When the listing shows Asian men with a
48 percent ranking in managerial/professional jobs, it does not
mean that Asian men have 48 percent of all such jobs, but that
among all working Asian males, almost one in two is a manager
or a professional.50 More discrimination cases. The number of
race-based charges of discrimination that were deemed to show
reasonable cause by the US Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission increased from 294 in 1995 to 957 in 2013.
Companies paid a total of $112 million to resolve these claims
outside of litigation in 2013.51 Lower earnings. Minorities also

tend to earn less personal income than whites. Median weekly
earnings in 2010 were $1,103, $884, $1,275, and $895 for
whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, respectively.
Interestingly, Asians had the highest median income.52
Mismatch between Education and OccupationApproximately 37
percent of the labor force has a college degree, and college
graduates typically earn substantially more than workers with
less education.53 At the same time, however, three trends
suggest a mismatch between educational attainment and the
knowledge and skills needed by employers. First, recent studies
show that college graduates, while technically and functionally
competent, are lacking in terms of teamwork skills, critical
thinking, and analytic reasoning. Second, there is a shortage of
college graduates in technical fields related to science, math,
and engineering. Third, organizations are finding that high-
school graduates working in entry-level positions do not possess
the basic skills needed to perform effectively. This latter trend
is partly due to a national highschool-graduation rate of only 75
percent and the existence of about 32 million adults in the
United States who are functionally illiterate.54 Literacy is
defined as “an individual’s ability to read, write, and speak
English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency
necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one’s
goals, and develop one’s knowledge and potential.”55 Many
studies on illiteracy refer to illiteracy costing America around
$60 billion a year in lost productivity. Such costs are worrisome
to both government officials and business leaders (see the
Example box). Generational Differences in an Aging
WorkforceAmerica’s population and workforce are getting
older, and the workforce includes greater generational
differences than ever before. We already see four generations of
employees working together, soon to be joined by a fifth (see
Table 4.1). Managers need to deal effectively with these
generational differences in values, attitudes, and behaviors.
Many companies (including IBM, Lockheed Martin, Ernst &
Young LLP, and Aetna) address this issue by providing training

workshops on generational diversity. Page 129 EXAMPLEWhy
Is a Skills Gap Important to the United States? The answer is all
about the relationship between human capital and economic
growth. Results from a global study presented in The Wall
Street Journal showed that “countries with higher math and
science skills have grown faster than those with lower-skilled
populations.”56 WHERE DOES THE UNITED STATES STAND
AGAINST OTHER COUNTRIES?The United States, once the
envy of the world, in 1990 had the largest percentage of 25- to
34-year-olds with at least a college degree. Now the United
States lags behind 14 other developed countries according to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD).57 More specifically, in 2009 the United States ranked
31st in math—similar to Portugal and Italy—on the OECD’s
Programme for International Student Assessment. If you
consider “advanced” performance on math, “16 countries
produced twice as many high achievers per capita than the U.S.
did.” WHY IS THE UNITED STATES FALLING
BEHIND?There are several reasons. Too many high school
dropouts is one. Another has to deal with the degrees students
are pursuing. “Not all bachelor’s degrees are the same,”
Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the
Workforce said in an extensive analysis issue last year. “While
going to college is undoubtedly a wise decision, what you take
while you’re there matters a lot, too.”58 Many students simply
are majoring in subjects that are not in demand. HOW IS THE
UNITED STATES TRYING TO OVERCOME THE SKILLS
GAP?Referencing this gap, President Obama declared that “by
2020 America will once again have the highest proportion of
college graduates in the world.”59 While such rhetoric won’t
get the job done, it does point the country in the right direction.
The president is also pushing for more student aid. Calls for
federal and state governments, educators, associations, work
councils, and organizations to cooperatively work together to
solve this problem may yield results. One renewed idea is an
increase in the use of apprenticeships. Apprenticeships let an

organization train employees on the skills needed by the
business. There were more than 375,000 people registered for
apprenticeship programs in 2013.60 Educators are retooling the
content of what they teach. Ellen Van Velso, a senior fellow at
the Center for Creative Leadership, noted that “while
undergraduate business administration and MBA programs
provide students with a variety of technical skills, leadership
and other soft skills are virtually absent in many programs.”61
Educators are also changing how they teach, for example, with
personalized learning. Personalized learning entails combining
“a new generation of sophisticated adaptive courseware” with
the “best of teacher- and computer-delivered instruction.” In
this vein, some schools in New York City are experimenting
with a “comprehensive math program called School of One, in
which each student receives a unique daily schedule, called a
playlist, based on his or her academic strengths and needs.
Students in the same classroom receive substantially different
instruction every day, often from several teachers, both in
person and online.”62 YOUR THOUGHTS? 1.Are you hopeful
that the United States can regain its dominance in human
capital? 2.How valuable do you see each of the specific efforts
to reduce the skills gap identified above? 3.What else would
you recommend as a solution to cure the skills gap? Based on
the labels used in Table 4.1, how many different generations do
you see? Do you think it’s harder for a boomer to supervise a
Millennial or vice versa? Table 4.1 summarizes generational
differences using common labels: Traditionalists, baby boomers,
Gen Xers, Millennials/Gen Ys, and the incoming Gen 2020s. We
use such labels (and resulting generalizations) for sake of
discussion. There are always exceptions to the characterizations
shown in Table 4.1.63 Millennials account for the largest block
of employees in the workforce, followed by baby boomers. This
is important because many Millennials are being managed by
boomers who possess very different values and personal traits.
Traits, discussed in Chapter 3, represent stable physical and
mental characteristics that form an individual’s identity.

Conflicting values and traits are likely to create friction
between people. For example, the workaholic and competitive
nature of boomers is likely to conflict with the entitled and
work–life balance perspective of Millennials. Managers and
employees alike will need to be sensitive to the generational
differences highlighted in Table 4.1. Page 130 TABLE
4.1GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES SOURCE: Adapted from
J. C. Meister and K. Willyerd, The 2020 Workplace (New York:
Harper Collins, 2010), 54–55; and R. Alsop, The Trophy Kids
Grow Up (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 5. Have age-
related differences at school or work caused any conflicts for
you? The following Self-Assessment was created to assess your
attitudes toward older employees. Because the term “older” is
relative, we encourage you to define “older employees” in your
own terms when completing the assessment. SELF-
ASSESSMENT 4.1Attitudes about Working with Older
Employees Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self-
Assessment 4.1. Then consider the following questions: 1.What
is your attitude about working with older employees? Are you
surprised by the results? 2.What is your level of satisfaction
working with older employees? 3.Based on your results, what
can you do to improve your satisfaction associated with working
with older employees? Page 131 4.6BARRIERS AND
CHALLENGES TO MANAGING DIVERSITY MAJOR
QUESTION What are the most common barriers to
implementing successful diversity programs? THE BIGGER
PICTURE Wouldn’t you rather know what obstacles lay ahead,
instead of discovering them too late? We share 11 common
challenges in effectively managing diversity. Diversity is a
sensitive, potentially volatile, and sometimes uncomfortable
issue for people. For example, some think that diversity
programs serve to create reverse discrimination against whites,
and others believe that it is immoral to be anything other than
heterosexual. It is therefore not surprising that organizations
encounter significant barriers when trying to move forward with
diversity initiatives. The following is a list of the most common

barriers to implementing successful diversity programs:64
1.Inaccurate stereotypes and prejudice. This barrier manifests
itself in the belief that differences are viewed as weaknesses. In
turn, this promotes the view that diversity hiring will mean
sacrificing competence and quality. A good example can be seen
by considering a particular stereotype that significantly
disadvantages women during salary negotiations. “Women are
generally seen as low in competence but high in warmth, and
men are seen as high in competence but low in warmth.”65
Research shows that women experience backlash when they
engage in genderincongruent behaviors like being an aggressive
negotiator. The end result is that recruiters or hiring managers
lose interest in hiring or working with women who violate the
high-warmth, low-competence stereotype.66 2.Ethnocentrism.
The ethnocentrism barrier represents the feeling that one’s
cultural rules and norms are superior or more appropriate than
the rules and norms of another culture. 3.Poor career planning.
This barrier is associated with the lack of opportunities for
diverse employees to get the type of work assignments that
qualify them for senior management positions. 4.A negative
diversity climate. We define organizational climate in Chapter 7
as employee perceptions about an organization’s formal and
informal policies, practices, and procedures. Diversity climate
is a subcomponent of an organization’s overall climate and is
defined as the employees’ aggregate “perceptions about the
organization’s diversity-related formal structure characteristics
and informal values.”67 Diversity climate is positive when
employees view the organization as being fair to all types of
employees; the concept of organizational fairness is raised
again in Chapter 5. Recent research revealed that a positive
diversity climate enhanced employees’ psychological safety.
Psychological safety reflects the extent to which people feel
safe to express their ideas and beliefs without fear of negative
consequences. As you might expect, psychological safety is
positively associated with outcomes in the Integrative
Framework.68 5.An unsupportive and hostile working

environment for diverse employees. Sexual, racial, and age
harassment are common examples of hostile work environments.
Whether perpetrated against women, men, older individuals, or
LGBT people, hostile environments are demeaning, unethical,
and appropriately called “work environment pollution.” You
certainly won’t get employees’ best work if they believe that
the work environment is hostile toward them. Remember, a
hostile work environment is perceptual. This means that people
have different perceptions of what entails “hostility.” It also is
important to note that harassment can take place via e-mail,
texting, and other forms of social media. Page 132 6.Lack of
political savvy on the part of diverse employees. Diverse
employees may not get promoted because they do not know how
to “play the game” of getting along and getting ahead in an
organization. Research reveals that women and people of color
are excluded from organizational networks.69 Some
organizations attempt to overcome this barrier by creating
employee-resource groups. These groups encourage individuals
with similar backgrounds to share common experiences and
success strategies. American Express has 16 network groups and
Cisco has 11.70 7.Difficulty in balancing career and family
issues. Women still assume the majority of the responsibilities
associated with raising children. This makes it harder for
women to work evenings and weekends or to frequently travel
once they have children. Even without children in the picture,
household chores take more of a woman’s time than a man’s
time. 8.Fears of reverse discrimination. Some employees believe
that managing diversity is a smoke screen for reverse
discrimination. This belief leads to very strong resistance
because people feel that one person’s gain is another’s loss.
9.Diversity is not seen as an organizational priority. This leads
to subtle resistance that shows up in the form of complaints and
negative attitudes. Employees may complain about the time,
energy, and resources devoted to diversity that could have been
spent doing “real work.” 10.The need to revamp the
organization’s performance appraisal and reward system.

Performance appraisals and reward systems must reinforce the
need to effectively manage diversity. This means that success
will be based on a new set of criteria. For example, General
Electric evaluates the extent to which its managers are inclusive
of employees with different backgrounds. These evaluations are
used in salary and promotion decisions.71 11.Resistance to
change. Effectively managing diversity entails significant
organizational and personal change. As discussed in Chapter 16,
people resist change for many different reasons. Now that you
know about the importance of the diversity climate, are you
curious about the diversity climate in a current or former
employer? If yes, take the Self-Assessment below. It measures
the components of an organization’s diversity climate and will
enable you to determine if your employer has or had a favorable
or unfavorable climate. SELF-ASSESSMENT 4.2Assessing an
Organization’s Diversity Climate Go to
connect.mheducation.com and take Self-Assessment 4.2. Then
consider the following questions: 1.What were the three
highest- and lowest-rated survey items? What does this tell you
about your employer? 2.Based on these scores, what advice
would you give to the person in charge of human resources at
the company you evaluated? In summary, managing diversity is
a critical component of organizational success. It is not an easy
task, but it is important if you want to create an environment
that engages and motivates employees to do their best. Page 133
4.7ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES USED TO
EFFECTIVELY MANAGE DIVERSITY MAJOR QUESTION
What are organizations doing to effectively manage diversity,
and what works best? THE BIGGER PICTURE Whether you
manage a diverse work group or find yourself managed within a
diverse work group, you’ll do better by understanding the
various ways in which organizations attempt to manage
diversity. You’ll be able to review eight options in the
following. Hint: We recommend mutual adaptation. What are
organizations doing to effectively manage diversity? We can
answer this question by first providing a framework for

categorizing organizational initiatives. Framework of Options
One especially relevant framework was developed by R.
Roosevelt Thomas Jr., a diversity expert. He identified eight
generic action options that can be used to address any type of
diversity issue. After describing each action option, we discuss
relationships among them.72 Option 1: Include/ExcludeThis
choice is an outgrowth of affirmative-action programs. Its
primary goal is to either increase or decrease the number of
diverse people at all levels of the organization. Shoney’s
restaurant chain represents a good example of a company that
attempted to include diverse employees after settling a
discrimination lawsuit. The company subsequently hired
African Americans into positions of diningroom supervisors and
vice presidents, added more franchises owned by African
Americans, and purchased more goods and services from
minority-owned companies.73 Option 2: DenyPeople using this
option deny that differences exist. Denial may manifest itself in
proclamations that all decisions are color, gender, and age blind
and that success is solely determined by merit and performance.
Consider Novartis Pharmaceuticals, for example. The company
lost a gender discrimination lawsuit to a class of 5,600 female
representatives, costing the company $152 million. Holly
Waters, one of the plaintiffs, charged that “she was not only
paid less than her male equivalents at Novartis, but was fired
when she was seven months pregnant after taking a few weeks
off on advice of her doctors.” Holly Waters was the highest
performer in her district.74 Novartis denied that gender
discrimination was a companywide issue despite the fact that
5,600 women will receive compensation.75 Page 134 Option 3:
AssimilateThe basic premise behind this alternative is that all
diverse people will learn to fit in or become like the dominant
group. It only takes time and reinforcement for people to see the
light. Organizations initially assimilate employees through their
recruitment practices and the use of company-orientation
programs. New hires generally are put through orientation
programs that aim to provide employees with the organization’s

preferred values and a set of standard operating procedures.
Employees then are encouraged to refer to the policies and
procedures manual when they are confused about what to do in
a specific situation. These practices create homogeneity among
employees. Option 4: SuppressDifferences are squelched or
discouraged when using this approach. This can be done by
telling or reinforcing others to quit whining and complaining
about issues. The old “you’ve got to pay your dues” line is
another frequently used way to promote the status quo. Option
5: IsolateThis option maintains the current way of doing things
by setting the diverse person off to the side. In this way the
individual is unable to influence organizational change.
Managers can isolate people by putting them on special
projects. Entire work groups or departments are isolated by
creating functionally independent entities, frequently referred to
as “silos.” Shoney Inc.’s employees commented to a Wall Street
Journal reporter about isolation practices formerly used by the
company: White managers told of how Mr. Danner [previous
chairman of the company] told them to fire blacks if they
became too numerous in restaurants in white neighborhoods; if
they refused, they would lose their jobs, too. Some also said
that when Mr. Danner was expected to visit their restaurant,
they scheduled black employees off that day or, in one case, hid
them in the bathroom. Others said blacks’ applications were
coded and discarded.76 Option 6: TolerateToleration entails
acknowledging differences but not valuing or accepting them. It
represents a live-and-let-live approach that superficially allows
organizations to give lip service to the issue of managing
diversity. Toleration is different from isolation in that it allows
for the inclusion of diverse people. However, differences are
not really valued or accepted when an organization uses this
option. Option 7: Build RelationshipsThis approach is based on
the premise that good relationships can overcome differences. It
addresses diversity by fostering quality relationships—
characterized by acceptance and understanding—among diverse
groups. Marriott, for example, has paired younger and older

employees into teams so that they can more effectively
capitalize on their strengths and weaknesses.77 Marriott hotels
is upgrading the look in its hotel rooms to appeal to a wider
base of customers. Here we see J.W. Marriott Jr. (right) with his
three sons, John (left), Steve (second left), and David pulling on
a ceremonial gold rope to unveil a model of the new room
design. Option 8: Foster Mutual Adaptation In this option,
people are willing to adapt or change their views for the sake of
creating positive relationships with others. This implies that
employees and management alike must be willing to accept
differences and, most important, agree that everyone and
everything is open for change. Diversity training is one way to
kick-start mutual adaptation. Research shows that such training
can positively enhance people’s attitudes and feelings about
working with diverse employees.78 Conclusions about Action
OptionsAlthough the action options can be used alone or in
combination, some are clearly better than others. Exclusion,
denial, assimilation, suppression, isolation, and toleration are
among the least preferred options. Inclusion, building
relationships, and mutual adaptation are the preferred strategies.
That said, Thomas reminds us that mutual adaptation is the only
approach that unquestionably endorses the philosophy behind
managing diversity. In closing this discussion, it is important to
note that choosing how to best manage diversity is a dynamic
process that is determined by the context at hand. For instance,
some organizations are not ready for mutual adaptation. The
best one might hope for in this case is the inclusion of diverse
people. Page 135 How Companies Are Responding to the
Challenges of Diversity We close the chapter by sharing some
examples and models that demonstrate how companies are
responding to emerging challenges of managing diversity. If
you compare the following actions against Thomas’s
framework, you’ll find the greatest activity around Options 7
and 8, of building relationships or fostering mutual adaptation.
Response: Paying Attention to Sexual OrientationA research
project conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA revealed

that about 3.5 percent of adults identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender (LGBT). This amounts to 9 million
Americans.79 But there are challenges. It is currently legal in
29 states to fire employees whose sexual orientation is
something other than heterosexual, and it is legal in 34 states to
fire transgender individuals.80 This situation is likely to create
negative job attitudes and feelings of marginalization for LGBT
people. Corporate law firm Bingham McCutchen and Adobe
Systems have tried to overcome this problem by instituting
programs such as additional benefits for transgender employees
and same-sex-partner benefits.81 Response: Responding to
Changing Customer DemographicsA Citizens Union Bank
branch in Louisville, Kentucky, designed and staffed the branch
with the goal of attracting more Latina/o customers. The
interior contains “bright, colorful walls of yellows and blues,
large-scale photos of Latin American countries, comfortable
couches, sit-down desks, a children’s play area, a television
tuned to Hispanic programming and even a vending area stocked
with popular Latin American–brand soft drinks and snacks.”
The branch also took on a new name: Nuestro Banco, Spanish
for “Our Bank.” Branch deposits are setting records, and the
CEO is planning to use this same model in other locations.82
The point to remember is that companies need to adopt policies
and procedures that meet the needs of all employees. As such,
programs such as day care and elder care, flexible work
schedules, and benefits such as paternal leaves, less-rigid
relocation policies, concierge services, and mentoring programs
are likely to become more popular. Response: Helping Women
Navigate the Career LabyrinthOrganizations can make
navigation easier by providing the developmental assignments
that prepare women for promotional opportunities and providing
flexible work schedules. For example, Boston Consulting Group
“focuses heavily on recruiting and retaining women, offering
part-time options, mentoring and professional-development
programs.” Companies like McKinsey & Co. and Goldman
Sachs Groups are using “on-ramping” programs to attract

former female employees to return to work. On-ramping
represents the process companies use to encourage people to
reenter the workforce after a temporary career break. Goldman,
for example, instituted “returnship” programs that offer short-
term job assignments to former employees.83 Response:
Helping Hispanics SucceedMiami Children’s Hospital and Shaw
Industries Inc. in Dalton, Georgia, attempted to improve
employee productivity, satisfaction, and motivation by
developing customized training programs to improve the
communication skills of their Spanish-speaking employees.84
Research further reveals that the retention and career
progression of minorities can be significantly enhanced through
effective mentoring. Page 136 Response: Providing both
Community and Corporate Training to Reduce the Mismatch
between Education and Job Requirements To combat this issue
on a more global level, companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co.
are partnering with local communities. JPMorgan started The
Fellowship Initiative (TFI) in New York in 2010 and expanded
it to Chicago and Los Angeles in 2014. The goal of the program
is to provide intensive academic and leadership training to
young men of color. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of
JPMorgan, is committed to the program. He concluded that
“these young men need access to high quality education and
positive role models in and outside the classroom.” New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg applauded JPMorgan’s effort by
concluding that “we need more civic-minded companies and
organizations to step up and join this work, and I congratulate
JPMorgan Chase for being a leader in this effort and for making
a real difference in the lives of young men of color in our
city.”85 At the individual corporate level, companies like
Wheeler Machinery Co. in Salt Lake City have instituted
specialized training programs that enable less-qualified people
to perform more technically oriented jobs. Lockheed Martin and
Agilent Technologies also offer some type of paid
apprenticeship or internship to attract high-school students
interested in the sciences.86 Response: Retaining and Valuing

Skills and Expertise in an Aging WorkforceHere are seven
initiatives that can help organizations to motivate and retain an
aging workforce: 1.Provide challenging work assignments that
make a difference to the firm. 2.Give the employee considerable
autonomy and latitude in completing a task. 3.Provide equal
access to training and learning opportunities when it comes to
new technology. 4.Provide frequent recognition for skills,
experience, and wisdom gained over the years. 5.Provide
mentoring opportunities whereby older workers can pass on
accumulated knowledge to younger employees. 6.Ensure that
older workers receive sensitive, high-quality supervision.
7.Design a work environment that is both stimulating and fun.87
You’ll see a number of these tactics at work in the employers
who made AARP’s 2013 list of best employers for older
workers, as, for example, the training and learning opportunities
provided by every employer who made the list. Employers
making the list typically offer flextime, compressed work
schedules, job sharing, and telecommuting. Representative
winners: Scripps Health, National Rural Electric Cooperative
Association, and S&T Bank.88 Response: Resolving
Generational DifferencesTraditional and boomer managers are
encouraged to consider their approach toward managing the
technologically savvy Gen Xers and Gen Ys. Gen Xers and Ys,
for instance, are more likely to visit social networking sites
during the work day, often perceiving this activity as a “virtual
coffee break.” In contrast, Traditional and boomer managers are
more likely to view this as wasted time, thereby leading to
policies that attempt to shut down such activity. Experts suggest
that restricting access to social media will not work in the long
run if an employer wants to motivate younger employees.
Would you like to improve your working relationships with
diverse people? If yes, then the Self-Assessment shown on the
following page can help. It asks you to compare yourself with a
group of other people you interact with and then to examine the
quality of the relationships between yourself and these
individuals. This enables you to gain a better understanding of

how similarities and differences among people influence your
attitudes and behavior. Page 137 SELF-ASSESSMENT 4.3How
Does My Diversity Profile Affect My Relationships with Other
People? Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self-
Assessment 4.3. Then consider the following questions:
1.Which diversity dimensions have the greatest influence with
respect to the quality of your interpersonal relationships?
2.Consider the person with whom you have the most difficulty
working. Which dimensions of diversity may contribute to this
bad relationship? What can you do to improve the relationship?
Response: Keep Working at ItManaging diversity takes
commitment. Sodexo is a good example (see the box below).
The company went from being highly regarded in managing
diversity, to encountering diversity-related problems. The
company is working to overcome these issues. solving
application Sodexo Encounters Diversity-Related Problems
Sodexo, one of the world’s largest providers of food services
and management, with nearly 420,000 employees in 80
countries, is a good example of a company that has attempted to
effectively manage diversity. Sodexo has a deserved if well-
groomed reputation for its diversity efforts, but the company’s
record is not perfect. Although the company was rated by
DiversityInc in 2013 as the very best company for diversity
based on its annual survey of 893 firms, Sodexo still is
encountering diversity-related problems.89 Problems at Sodexo.
Sodexo began its diversity program in 2002 in response to an
anti-discrimination class-action lawsuit, brought by African-
American employees who claimed they were not being promoted
at the same rate as their white colleagues. The suit was
eventually settled for $80 million in 2005. In 2010 NPR
reported that “about a quarter of the company’s managers are
minorities, but only about 12 percent are black, which is not
much of a change from five years ago, when the lawsuit was
settled.”90 Sodexo continues to have issues with labor and the
law. Since the 2005 settlement, allegations of discrimination
have continued, although often local in scope. The company has

had other labor problems, with workers complaining about low
wages. Also in 2010 Sodexo was called out by the Human
Rights Watch in a 2010 report detailing the company’s
violations of workers’ rights to unionize at several US
locations. On the legal front Sodexo has fought isolated health
code violations and charges of pocketing rebates from vendors
to the detriment of several state clients.91 In 2013 Sodexo
agreed to pay $20 million in one such rebate fraud lawsuit
brought by New York.92 Executives from Sodexo speaking to
employees. YOUR CALL Apply the 3-Stop Problem-Solving
Approach. Stop 1:What is the problem in this case? Stop
2:Identify the OB concepts or theories to use to solve the
problem. Stop 3:What would you do to correct this situation?
Page 138 what did i learn? You learned that social perception
and managing diversity are essential for success. Why? Social
perception, so that you can better understand the perception
process, improve how you are perceived, and adjust your own
perception to avoid common perceptual errors; managing
diversity (represented by demographics in our Integrative
Framework), so that you can better optimize diversity’s effect
on individual and group/team outcomes. Reinforce your learning
with the Key Points below. Then, consolidate your learning
using the Integrative Framework. Finally, Challenge your
mastery of the material by answering the Major Questions in
your own words. Key Points for Understanding Chapter 4 You
learned the following key points. 4.1A SOCIAL
INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL OF PERCEPTION
•Perception is a mental and cognitive process that enables us to
interpret and understand our surroundings. •Social perception is
a four-stage process. The four stages are selective
attention/comprehension, encoding and simplification, storage
and retention, and retrieval and response (see Figure 4.1).
•Social perception affects a wide variety of organizational
activities including hiring decisions, performance appraisals,
leadership, and designing web pages. 4.2STEREOTYPES
•Stereotypes are used during encoding and represent

overgeneralized beliefs about the characteristics of a group.
•Stereotypes are not always negative, and they are not always
inaccurate. •Common stereotypes involve gender, race, and age.
•Stereotyping is a four-step process that includes categorization,
inference, expectation formation, and maintenance. •Stereotypes
are maintained by (a) overestimating the frequency of
stereotypic behaviors exhibited by others, (b) incorrectly
explaining expected and unexpected behaviors, and (c)
differentiating minority individuals from oneself. 4.3CAUSAL
ATTRIBUTIONS •Causal attributions represent suspected or
inferred causes of behavior. •According to Kelley’s model of
causal attribution, external attributions tend to be made when
consensus and distinctiveness are high and consistency is low.
Internal (personal responsibility) attributions tend to be made
when consensus and distinctiveness are low and consistency is
high. •The fundamental attribution bias involves emphasizing
personal factors more than situational factors while formulating
attributions. The self-serving bias involves personalizing the
causes of one’s success and externalizing the causes of one’s
failures. 4.4DEFINING AND MANAGING DIVERSITY
•Diversity represents the individual differences that make
people different from and similar to each other. •Diversity
varies along “surface-level” characteristics like race, gender,
and age. It also varies along “deep-level” characteristics such as
attitudes, opinions, and values. •Affirmative action is an
outgrowth of equal employment opportunity legislation and is
an artificial intervention aimed at giving management a chance
to correct past discrimination. •Managing diversity entails
creating a host of organizational changes that enable all people
to perform up to their maximum potential. 4.5BUILDING THE
BUSINESS CASE FOR MANAGING DIVERSITY •Managing
diversity is predicted to be good business because it aims to
engage employees and satisfy customers’ unique needs. •There
are four key demographic trends: (a) women navigating a
labyrinth after breaking the glass ceiling, (b) racial groups
encountering a glass ceiling and perceived discrimination, (c) a

mismatch existing between workers’ educational attainment and
occupational requirements, and (d) generational differences in
an aging workforce. 4.6BARRIERS AND CHALLENGES TO
MANAGING DIVERSITY Page 139 •There are 11 barriers to
successfully implementing diversity initiatives: (a) inaccurate
stereotypes and prejudice, (b) ethnocentrism, (c) poor career
planning, (d) a negative diversity climate, (e) an unsupportive
and hostile working environment for diverse employees, (f) lack
of political savvy on the part of diverse employees, (g)
difficulty in balancing career and family issues, (h) fears of
reverse discrimination, (i) diversity not seen as an
organizational priority, (j) the need to revamp the
organization’s performance appraisal and reward system, and
(k) resistance to change. 4.7ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES
USED TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE DIVERSITY
•Organizations have eight options that they can use to address
diversity issues: (a) include/exclude the number of diverse
people at all levels of the organization, (b) deny that differences
exist, (c) assimilate diverse people into the dominant group, (d)
suppress differences, (e) isolate diverse members from the
larger group, (f) tolerate differences among employees, (g)
build relationships among diverse employees, and (h) foster
mutual adaptation to create positive relationships. The
Integrative Framework for Chapter 4 As shown in Figure 4.4,
you learned that demographics representing diversity serve as a
key input and perceptions and group/team dynamics are crucial
processes. These result in a variety of important outcomes, chief
among them well-being/flourishing at the individual level and
being the employer of choice and reputation at the
organizational level. These outcomes appear in boldface. Other
outcomes listed were touched upon in the chapter. Challenge:
Major Questions for Chapter 4 At the start of the chapter, we
told you that after reading the chapter you should be able to
answer the following major questions. Unless you can, have you
really processed and internalized the lessons in the chapter?
Refer to the Key Points, Figure 4.4, the chapter itself, and your

notes to revisit and answer the following major questions:
1.How does the perception process affect the quality of my
decisions and interpersonal relationships? 2.How can I use
knowledge of stereotypes to make better decisions and manage
more effectively? 3.How do I tend to interpret employee
performance? 4.How does awareness about the layers of
diversity help organizations effectively manage diversity?
5.What is the business rationale for managing diversity? 6.What
are the most common barriers to implementing successful
diversity programs? 7.What are organizations doing to
effectively manage diversity, and what works best? FIGURE
4.4INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING
AND APPLYING OB © 2014 Angelo Kinicki and Mel Fugate.
All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without permission
of the authors. Page 140 PROBLEM-SOLVING APPLICATION
CASE (PSAC) Seal of Disapproval Wet Seal Inc. sells women’s
clothes and accessories under two brands in malls and shopping
centers across the country (and Puerto Rico). Under the Wet
Seal banner, nearly 470 stores target younger female customers
aged 13 to 23 years old. Its Arden B brand, through some 80
stores, targets women aged 21 to 39. These age ranges come
from the company itself (at wetsealinc.com), which identifies
Wet Seal as a “trend-right fashion retailer” and its target as
“girls,” with its core customer at 16 years of age, who loves
fashion and shops frequently, both in the mall and online. The
company identifies Arden B as a “contemporary fashion
destination” with its target as “women,” and its core customer at
28 years of age, who maintains a full social calendar and is
always “dressed.” So far so good. But why would the company
want to trigger a furor over outrageously callous and nearly
unthinkable racist hiring practices? The issue went public in
2012 but has earlier roots. Wrong by Race For Nicole Cogdell
the trouble started in 2009 when she and her associates at the
Wet Seal store in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, were preparing
to welcome visiting Senior Vice President of Store Operations
Barbara Bachman. After the meet and greet, Cogdell was

shocked by what happened next. “I later overheard her say to
the district manager, ‘I was expecting someone with blond hair
and blue eyes.’ She also said that I was not the brand image that
Wet Seal wanted to project and the regional manager must have
been out of her mind to promote an African American as store
manager for the King of Prussia store.”93 Cogdell said that her
two associates heard the comment too. She was later terminated,
and said her district manager told her she was being fired
because she was African American. “I was completely
embarrassed and humiliated. I was just shocked that someone
would say something like that. . . . I never dealt with race
discrimination at any of my jobs prior to this situation. I was
just overall devastated.” Consolation Job The company offered
her a new position. “That job consisted of a demotion from my
previous position,” she said, with “less pay and going back to
the Springfield store. I declined the offer because the company
refused to address their policies. I have always been a
professional in the workplace, and I believe you should be
judged by your performance and not the color of your skin.”
Management Edicts Cogdell’s contention that racial bias was a
matter of company policy has surprising collaboration. In a
March 2009 e-mail to the Vice President of Store Operations
and a district manager, under the heading “Global Issues,”
Bachman wrote, “Store Teams need diversity—African
Americans dominate—huge issue.” After observing a number of
African-American employees working at a store, another senior
executive ordered a district manager to “clean the entire store
out.”94 Lawsuit In 2012 the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) of the
National Association of Colored People (NAACP) filed Cogdell
v. Wet Seal. The class action lawsuit alleged that “top
executives at Wet Seal directed senior managers to get rid of
African American store management employees for the sake of
its ‘brand image,’ and to hire more white employees.”95 Joining
Cogdell as plaintiffs were two other former Wet Seal
employees: Myriam Saint-Hilaire, also from the King of Prussia
store, and Kai Hawkins, who had worked at Wet Seal locations

in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs seek
back pay, general damages, and punitive damages.
Documentation “This case is remarkable in part because the
discriminatory policies are documented by former managers, but
also in an e-mail from the senior vice president,” Brad
Seligman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said. “There is
nothing subtle here.”96 Elsewhere Seligman was quoted as
saying, “They perceived that they would reach white markets
better if they had more white managers. You have explicit
directions from the very top of the company to terminate
African American managers.”97 EEOC Determination In
November 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission announced it had found that Wet Seal illegally
discriminated against Cogdell. In its statement, citing unusually
blatant evidence of racial discrimination, the director of the
commission’s Philadelphia office noted that Wet Seal’s
“corporate managers have openly stated they wanted employees
who had the ‘Armani look, were white, had blue eyes, thin and
blond’ to be profitable.’”98 Note: By this time the EEOC had
received over 20 complaints against Wet Seal.99 Page 141
Resigned vs. Being Forced Out In the suit, Wet Seal claimed
that Cogdell had resigned her position for unknown reasons and
therefore the company was not guilty of an adverse employment
action. In contrast, the EEOC determination was that the hostile
environment forced her to resign and that resignation was her
only recourse. Selective Diversity In defending her e-mail in an
August 2012 deposition, Bachman said she wrote her comments
to stress the importance of having diversity in all stores. The
EEOC determination noted that “witness interviews revealed
that Bachman never expressed diversity concerns in stores with
a predominantly white sales force but encouraged it because the
sales force mirrored the community.”100 Bachman, by the way,
left Wet Seal in 2011 and is now a retail consultant. Race,
Retail, Body Image As of a recent visit to the Wet Seal site
(wetseal.com), five photographs showed eight young women in
all, with some models appearing more than once. All women

were young, thin, and attractive; all but one model were clearly
white. The one non-Caucasian model, who may be African
American or of mixed race, appeared twice, once alone and once
standing with another model. The site also has numerous links
at the bottom of the page to stress the company’s commitment
to diversity. Online Demographics While Wet Seal does not
publish the demographics of its customers beyond targeting
specific age groups, a web analytics company purports to do
just that. Quantcast Corporation routinely provides free
analytics of web traffic to major vendors to induce the vendors
to purchase its premium data services. Basically Quantcast
extrapolates specific demographic data from known profiles
developed from unique computer or ISP identifiers. With
caveats that its statistics on wetseal.com are partial and include
estimates, the stats are most useful as relative measures
compared to the demographics associated with all web users. A
recent tally by Quantcast showed wetseal.com traffic in gender
to be 64% female (vs. 51% for the net overall). In age, the
under 18-component at 36% was highest, followed by the 18–24
group at 28% (vs. 18% and 12% for the net overall). In race,
visitors were 49% Caucasian and 26% African American,
followed by Hispanic and Asian segments (vs. 75% Caucasian
and 9% African American, again followed by Hispanic and
Asian). The figures relate only to visits and not sales. Employee
View Meanwhile, current employee reviews of Wet Seal as an
employer on the employer ranking site glassdoor.com do not
mention racial discrimination, but some reviews complain of
favoritism, especially on the basis of appearance. Apply the 3-
Stop Problem-Solving Approach to OB Use the Integrative
Framework in Figure 4.4 along the journey through all three
stops to help identify inputs, processes, and outcomes relative
to this case. Stop 1.Define the problem. Stop 2.Identify the OB
concepts or theories to use to solve the problem. Stop 3.Make
recommendations and (if appropriate) take action. And then . . .
•Justify your solution. •Tell how you will evaluate the
effectiveness of your solution. LEGAL/ETHICAL

CHALLENGE Swastikas and Neonatal Care This case involved
an incident that occurred at Hurley Medical Center in Michigan.
It resulted in a lawsuit. Tonya Battle, a veteran black nurse in
Hurley’s neonatal intensive care unit, was taking care of a baby
when a man walked into the unit. The man, who had a swastika
tattoo, reached for the baby and was stopped by Tonya. She
asked to see the wristband that identified him as the baby’s
parent. This was apparently hospital policy. “He abruptly told
her he wanted to see her supervisor, who then advised Battle
she should no longer care for the child.”101 The man requested
that no African-American nurses should take care of his child.
A note was subsequently put on the assignment clipboard
saying, “No African American nurse to take care of baby.”
Tonya was “shocked, offended, and in disbelief that she was so
egregiously discriminated against based on her race and re-
assigned, according to the lawsuit, which asks for punitive
damages for emotional stress, mental anguish, humiliation and
damages to her reputation.102 Battle could not understand why
the hospital would accommodate the man’s request. Although
the note was later removed, black nurses were not allowed to
care for the child for about a month. Page 142 It is important to
note that the “American Medical Association’s ethics code bars
doctors from refusing to treat people based on race, gender, and
other criteria, but there are no specific policies for handling
race-based requests from patients.” Further, a survey of
“emergency physicians found patients often make such requests,
and they are routinely accommodated. A third of doctors who
responded said they felt patients perceive better care from
providers of shared demographics, with racial matches
considered more important than gender or religion.”103 Your
Views What would you have done if you were a medical
administrator at the time the request was made? 1.I would not
have honored the man’s request. I would have explained why
Tonya Battle and other African-American nurses are best suited
to take care of his child. 2.I would have done exactly what the
hospital did. The man has a right to have his child taken care of

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