AIU Exam – Managing diversity in Human Resources

School: Business & Economics

Major: Human Resource Management

Course title: Managing diversity in Human Resources

Credits for course: 3 credits
Description of course:
 WHAT IS HUMAN RESOURCE  DEFENSES AGAINST
MANAGEMENT? DISCRIMINATION ALLEGATIONS
 THE TRENDS SHAPING HUMAN  ILLUSTRATIVE DISCRIMINATORY
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES
 WHAT DO THE NEW HUMAN  THE EEOC ENFORCEMENT
RESOURCE MANAGERS DO? PROCESS
 WHAT COMPETENCIES DO  DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT AND
TODAY’S HUMAN RESOURCE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
MANAGERS NEED? PROGRAMS
 SELECTED EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY LAWS

Book & chapter: FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, by Gary

Dessler, Chapters 1 and 2

Link to book:

http://aiustudev.aiu.edu/submissions/profiles/resources/onlineBook/W8w2H8_fundamen
tals%20of%20human%20resource%20development.pdf
Bibliography of book:

Dessler, Gary. Fundamentals of human resource management. Pearson Higher Ed,

2011.

Format of the assignment: Assignment must have an AIU cover page, introduction to
the topics of the chapter, answers to the questions below, conclusion about the exam
and the bibliography of book at end of assignment.
Chapter 1

Answer with 2 to 6 paragraphs… (page 16)

1. What is human resource management?

2. Explain with at least five examples why “a knowledge and proficiency in HR

management concepts and techniques is important to all supervisors or
managers.”

3. Explain with examples what we mean by “the changing environment of human

resource management.”

4. Give examples of how the HR manager’s duties today are different from 30 years
ago.

5. Discuss, with examples, four important issues influencing HR management today.

6. Explain HR management’s role in relation to the firm’s line management.

7. Compare the authority of line and staff managers. Give examples of each.

8. Interview an HR manager. Based on that interview, write a short presentation

regarding HR’s role today in building competitive organizations.

9. Based on your personal experiences, list 5 examples showing how you used (or
could have used) human resource management techniques at work or school.

10.
HR IN ACTION CASE INCIDENT 1
Jack Nelson’s Problem
As a new member of the board of directors for a local bank, Jack Nelson was being introduced
to all the employees in the home office. When he was introduced to Ruth Johnson, he was
curious about her work and asked her what her machine did. Johnson replied that she really did
not know what the machine was called or what it did. She explained that she had been working
there for only two months. She did, however, know precisely how to operate the machine.
According to her supervisor, she was an excellent employee.
At one of the branch offices, the supervisor in charge spoke to Nelson confidentially, telling him
that “something was wrong,” but she didn’t know what. For one thing, she explained, employee
turnover was too high, and no sooner had one employee been put on the job than another one
resigned. With customers to see and loans to be made, she explained, she had little time to
work with the new employees as they came and went. All branch supervisors hired their own
employees without communication with the home office or other branches. When an opening
developed, the supervisor tried to find a suitable employee to replace the worker who had quit.
After touring the 22 branches and finding similar problems in many of them, Nelson wondered
what the home office should do or what action he should take. The banking firm was generally
regarded as a well-run institution that had grown from 27 to 191 employees during the past eight
years. The more he thought about the matter, the more puzzled Nelson became. He couldn’t
quite put his finger on the problem, and he didn’t know whether to report his findings to the
president.
Questions
1. What do you think is causing some of the problems in the bank’s home office and
branches?
2. Do you think setting up an HR unit in the main office would help?
3. What specific functions should an HR unit carry out? What HR functions would then
be carried out by the bank’s supervisors and other line managers?

Source: “Jack Nelson’s Problem,” by Claude S. George, from Supervision In Action: The Art of
Managing Others, 4th ed., 1985. Copyright © 1985 by Pearson Education, Inc. Reprinted with
permission.

11.
HR IN ACTION CASE INCIDENT 2
Carter Cleaning Company
Introduction
A main theme of this text is that HR management—activities like recruiting, selecting, training,
and rewarding employees—is not just the job of a central HR group but rather a job in which
every manager must engage. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the typical small
service business. Here the owner/manager usually has no HR staff on which to rely. However,
the success of his or her enterprise (not to mention his or her family’s peace of mind) often
depends largely on the effectiveness through which workers are recruited, hired, trained,
evaluated, and rewarded. Therefore, to help illustrate and emphasize the front-line manager’s
HR role, throughout this text we will use a continuing case based on an actual small business in
the southeastern United States. Each chapter’s segment of the case will illustrate how the
case’s main player—owner/manager Jennifer Carter—confronts and solves personnel problems
each day at work by applying the concepts and techniques of that particular chapter. Here is
background information you will need to answer questions that arise. (We also present a
second, unrelated case incident in each chapter.)
Carter Cleaning Centers
Jennifer Carter graduated from State University in June 2005, and, after considering several job
offers, decided to do what she really always planned to do—go into business with her father,
Jack Carter. Jack Carter opened his first laundromat in 1998 and his second in 2001. The main
attraction of these coin laundry businesses for him was that they were capital intensive rather
than labor intensive. Thus, once the investment in machinery was made, the stores could be run
with just one unskilled attendant and have none of the labor problems one normally expects
from being in the retail service business.
The attractiveness of operating with virtually no skilled labor notwithstanding, Jack had decided
by 1999 to expand the services in each of his stores to include the dry cleaning and pressing of
clothes. He embarked, in other words, on a strategy of “related diversification” by adding new
services that were related to and consistent with his existing coin laundry activities. He added
these in part because he wanted to better utilize the unused space in the rather large stores he
currently had under lease. But he also did so because he was, as he put it, “tired of sending out
the dry cleaning and pressing work that came in from our coin laundry clients to a dry cleaner 5
miles away, who then took most of what should have been our profits.” To reflect the new,
expanded line of services he renamed each of his two stores Carter Cleaning Centers and was
sufficiently satisfied with their performance to open four more of the same type of stores over
the next five years. Each store had its own on-site manager and, on average, about seven
employees and annual revenues of about $600,000. It was this six-store cleaning centers chain
that Jennifer joined upon graduating from State University.
Her understanding with her father was that she would serve as a troubleshooter and consultant
to the elder Carter with the aim of both learning the business and bringing to it modern
management concepts and techniques for solving the business’s problems and facilitating its
growth.

Questions
1. Make a list of five specific HR problems you think Carter Cleaning will have to grapple
with.
2. What would you do first if you were Jennifer?

Chapter 2

Answer with 2 to 6 paragraphs… (page 43)

1. Present a summary of what employers can and cannot legally do with respect to
recruitment, selection, and promotion and layoff practices.

2. Explain the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement process.

3. List five strategies for successfully increasing diversity of the workforce.

4. What is Title VII? What does it state?

5. What important precedents were set by the Griggs v. Duke Power Company case?
The Albemarle v. Moody case?

6. What is adverse impact? How can it be proven?

7. Explain the defenses and exceptions to discriminatory practice allegations.

8. What is the difference between affirmative action and equal employment opportunity?

9. Respond to the following three scenarios based on what you learned in this chapter.
Under what conditions (if any) do you think the following constitute sexual
harassment? (a) A female manager fires a male employee because he refuses her
requests for sexual favors. (b) A male manager refers to female employees as
“sweetie” or “baby.” (c) A female employee overhears two male employees
exchanging sexually oriented jokes.
10. Assume you are the manager in a small restaurant. You are responsible for hiring
employees, supervising them, and recommending them for promotion. Make a list
of potentially discriminatory management practices you should avoid.

11.
HR IN ACTION CASE INCIDENT 1
An Accusation of Sexual Harassment in Pro Sports
The jury in a sexual harassment suit brought by a former highranking New York Knicks
basketball team executive recently awarded her over $11 million in punitive damages. They did
so after hearing testimony during what the New York Times called a “sordid four-week trial.”
Officials of the Madison Square Garden (which owns the Knicks) said they would appeal the
verdict. However, even if they were to win on appeal (which one University of Richmond Law
School professor said was unlikely), the case still exposed the organization and its managers to
a great deal of unfavorable publicity.
The federal suit pitted Anucha Browne Sanders, the Knicks’ senior vice president of marketing
and business operations (and former Northwestern University basketball star), against the
team’s owner, Madison Square Garden, and its president, Isiah Thomas. The suit charged them
with sex discrimination and retaliation. Ms. Browne Sanders accused Mr. Thomas of verbally
abusing and sexually harassing her over a 2-year period, and says the Garden fired her about a
month after she complained to top management about the harassment. “My pleas and
complaints about Mr. Thomas’ illegal and offensive actions fell on deaf ears,” she said. At the
trial, the Garden cited numerous explanations for the dismissal, saying she had “failed to fulfill
professional responsibilities.”
At a news conference, Browne Sanders said that Thomas “refused to stop his demeaning and
repulsive behavior and the Garden refused to intercede.” For his part, Mr. Thomas vigorously
insisted he was innocent, and said, “I will not allow her or anybody, man or woman, to use me
as a pawn for their financial gain.” According to one report of the trial, her claims of harassment
and verbal abuse had little corroboration from witnesses, but neither did the Garden’s claims
that her performance had been subpar. After the jury decision came in favor of the plaintiff,
Browne Sanders’ lawyers said, “this [decision] confirms what we’ve been saying all along, that
[Browne Sanders] was sexually abused and fired for complaining about it.” The Garden’s
statement said, in part, that “We look forward to presenting our arguments to an appeals court
and believe they will agree that no sexual harassment took place.”

Questions
1. Do you think Ms. Browne Sanders had the basis for a sexual harassment suit? Why or
why not?
2. From what you know of this case, do you think the jury arrived at the correct decision?
If not, why not? If so, why?
3. Based on the few facts that you have, what steps if any could Garden management
have taken to protect themselves from liability in this matter?
4. Aside from the appeal, what would you do now if you were the Garden’s top
management?
5. “The allegations against the Madison Square Garden in this case raise ethical
questions with regard to the employer’s actions.” Explain whether you agree or
disagree with this statement, and why.
Sources: “Jury Awards $11.6 Million to Former Executive of Pro Basketball Team in
Harassment Case,” BNA Bulletin to Management, October 9, 2007, p. 323; Richard Sandomir,
“Jury Finds Knicks and Coach Harassed a Former Executive,” The New York Times,
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/sports/basketball/03garden.html?
em&ex=1191556800&en=41d47437f805290d&ei=5087%0A, accessed November 13, 2007;
“Thomas Defiant in Face of Harassment Claims,” http://espn.com, accessed November 13,
2007.
APPLICATION EXERCISES
12.
HR IN ACTION CASE INCIDENT 2
Carter Cleaning Company

A Question of Discrimination
One of the first problems Jennifer faced at her father’s Carter Cleaning Centers concerned the
inadequacies of the firm’s current HR management practices and procedures.
One problem that particularly concerned her was the lack of attention to equal employment
matters. Virtually all hiring was handled independently by each store manager, and the
managers themselves had received no training regarding such fundamental matters as the
types of questions that should not be asked of job applicants. It was therefore not unusual—in
fact, it was routine— for female applicants to be asked questions such as, “Who’s going to take
care of your children while you are at work?” and for minority applicants to be asked questions
about arrest records and credit histories. Nonminority applicants—three store managers were
white males and three were white females, by the way—were not asked these questions, as
Jennifer discerned from her interviews with the managers. Based on discussions with her father,
Jennifer deduced that part of the reason for the laid-back attitude toward equal employment
stemmed from (1) her father’s lack of sophistication regarding the legal requirements and (2) the
fact that, as Jack Carter put it, “Virtually all our workers are women or minority members
anyway, so no one can really come in here and accuse us of being discriminatory, can they?”
Jennifer decided to mull that question over, but before she could, she was faced with two
serious equal rights problems. Two women in one of her stores privately confided to her that
their manager was making unwelcome sexual advances toward them, and one claimed he had
threatened to fire her unless she “socialized” with him after hours. And during a fact-finding trip
to another store, an older man—he was 73 years old—complained of the fact that although he
had almost 50 years of experience in the business, he was being paid less than people half his
age who were doing the very same job. Jennifer’s review of the stores resulted in the following
questions.

Questions
1. Is it true, as Jack Carter claims, that “we can’t be accused of being discriminatory
because we hire mostly women and minorities anyway”?
2. How should Jennifer and her company address the sexual harassment charges and
problems?
3. How should she and her company address the possible problems of age
discrimination?
4. Given the fact that each of its stores has only a handful of employees, is her company
in fact covered by equal rights legislation?
5. And finally, aside from the specific problems, what other human resource
management matters (application forms, training, and so on) have to be reviewed
given the need to bring them into compliance with equal rights laws?