Juan Harker Thomas Saad Juliana Vanegas William Yacaman

Universidad de los Andes

Organizational Behaviour
Case 3: Gender and free speech at Google

As you read James Darmore’s memo, which parts of it cross into unacceptable speech and
which parts do not? Could he written it in a way so as to not have been fired by Google?

This is the case of James Darmore who wrote a memo in which he describes the way bias limits the
thinking about diversity and inclusion, but it is important to mention that he developed the entire
paper based on personal perception, which means he is influenced by his attitudes, motives,
experience, expectations and others. He started the paper saying that he value diversity and inclusion,
and not denying the existence of sexism, also, that he rejected the stereotypes. Although, he made a
great amount of them along the memo. In the first place, in the personality differences, he said that
women have feelings rather than ideas; they were more agreeableness and more neurotic, all of this
based entirely on his opinions. This kind of comments represent what is called “Stereotyping” which
is “when we judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which she or he belongs”
(Robbins, Judge, 2011, pg.173). In this way, this kind of comments are unacceptable, because he is
judging by a surface-level diversity which don't reflect the way people think or feel, instead it
generates stereotypes. (Robbins, Judge, 2011, pg.40)
In second place, there were parts of the speech that were acceptable because rather than establish
some kind of personal beliefs, he mentioned a social behaviour that is common in his culture, for
example: “government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms tend to
protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labelled as a
misogynist and a whiner. Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of
women’s oppression.” This, is an example of a acceptable part because reflects the way the system
behave and revealed the kinds of discrimination that may be happening in the company; such as
discriminatory policies or practices that are “actions taken by the representative of the organization
that deny equal opportunity to perform or unequal rewards for performance” ((Robbins, Judge, 2011,
pg.42) or exclusion. This part is considered acceptable because, rather than creating stereotypes about
women, it shows improvement opportunities to the company.
In third place, if Darmore wanted to highlight the bad practices that the company had, he should have
emphasized on a deep-level diversity, due to the fact that it take into account “values, personality, and
work preferences that become progressively more important for determining similarity as people get
to know one another better” (Robbins, Judge, 2011, pg.40) and not just stereotyped assumptions.

How would you evaluate Google’s response to Damore’s memo? Did Google make a mistake in
firing Darmore? Why or why not?
We believe that Google was right in firing Damore. We think it is a right decision although Damore
seems to justify and have reason in some of the things he argues. Google´s Code of Conduct
motivates and encourages employees to speak out about anything that does not seems right, however
Damore is neglecting some aspects of the Code of Conduct. Google also encourages freedom of
expression. First, in the Preface it clearly says that “it's about providing our users unbiased access to
information”. However, Damore´s memo seems to only speak out about things that would benefit his
memo. Larry Page argues that Damore is clearly missing some information, which is giving biased
information to users. Another important aspect to justify Google´s decision is that Damore somehow
is not acting honorably with the company. We believe it is important to speak out about irregularities
of a company, however Damore is part of the company and some parts of his memo go against
Google policies.

How would you evaluate Google’s efforts to increase the number of women employees,
particularly in tech jobs? Which features are fair? Which ones are unfair?

Taking into account the 3 distinct components of effective diversity programs: Teaching the manager
the legal framework and encourage fair treatment, teaching how a diverse workforce will be able to
serve a diverse market of customers and fostering personal development practices that acknowledge
the value of different points of view; google has effectively implemented programs that stimulate
women hiring and involvement in the company.
Google's diversity initiatives involved education, hiring and inclusion. These initiatives demonstrate
that the company is encouraging employees to approach diversity and attacking the problem from the
bottom. Investing resources in social investigations that try to analyze the reasons of the drivers of
female and minority student enrollment in computer science programs, and incentivizing the use of
coding are signs that the management is conscious of the legal framework and that are really trying to
increase the number of women in the company by understanding the whole context.
In terms of inclusion and education to the company's personnel, google authorized more than 700
employees to spend 20% of their time at work spearheading diversity efforts. Also the bias training
for employees show the efforts that the company invest in trying to foster personal development
practices to acknowledge the value of different perspectives. However a way in which these trainings
could be better was if they emphasize the higher-level similarities among members. Other evidence
of the good effort of the diversity management are the results. As seen in the case, the proportion of
female tech employees increased 3% in the next three years, and the percentage of women in
leadership positions rise 4% in that period of time to.

Imagine you are in Danielle Brown’s position. How difficult is the situation facing you? What
would you advise Pichai and Google’s senior leadership team to do going forward?

Danielle Brown is the vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer of Google, therefore she
is the highest ranking executive of the company whose area of expertise refers to the current issue and
she is expected to advise the CEO, Sundar Pichai, on how to handle the current scandal. Because of
this, the advice she will give is only meant in the benefit of the company and no other party, or on the
worst case the advice will help the company mitigate the public relations scrutiny that follows this
scandal.
The situation is very complex, on one hand James Damore (former employee of Google) was fired
because the memo he wrote tainted the company’s name by saying that in tech jobs the amount of
women was very low because there were biological differences between women and men that
influenced hiring biases and personal workplace development. This memo was leaked and considered
a violation to the company's code of conduct. Although many people supported Google on this
desition because they considered that the memo was oppressing women and it should not be tolerated.
Others considered that what Mr Damore did is considered an act of expression and that he should not
be fired because of his beliefs. Whatever decision the Mr Pichai takes, will have supporters and
opposers therefore Danielle Browns advice must be very fundamented in order to resist the
opposition.This is a very difficult situation because even if the comments made by Mr Damore on the
memo were opressing and marignalizing women, they were also scientifically correct as the case
states “As a professor of evolutionary psychology wrote, “almost all of google memo’s empirical
claims are scientifically accurate”.
Therefore, his manifesto cannot be considered an extreme attempt to oppress women. Nevertheless,
he was already fired from Google and if the company retracts from its desition it will go through a lot
of critics scrutinizing the executives and the directives because they bend to the pression of the public
which will reflect badly on the company's name. So the best advice that Danielle Brown can give
Sundar Pichai is to not retract on the firing of Mr Damore and to overcome the critics that claim the
free of speech and the liberty of expression by claiming a violation of Google’s code of conduct in
which it specifically states that “Each Googler is expected to do their utmost to create a workplace
culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination of any kind.” so by
making the memo public Mr Damore created a workplace culture based on discrimination against
Women and that is bias to supporting more men than women because of what he calls innate
biological advantages that men have over women. The advice would also recommend to address this
segregation problem that internally the company has where there are more men than women,
nevertheless, the company's priority must always be to hire the most qualified personnel, whether it is
a man or a woman.
References

Harvard Business School.(2019).Gender and free speech at Google.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational behavior. Pearson education limited.