Case Madison, Jones, and Conklin

After graduating from a prestigious business school, Laura Kravitz accepted a job at Madison, Jones, and Conklin, a medium-sized firm that did accounting and consulting projects for corporate clients. After a series of successful assignments working as a member of a project team, Laura was promoted to a team manager position with broader responsibilities. Laura felt confident about her qualifications. The other team managers seemed to respect her, and clients were happy with the projects she managed. With this record of success, Laura hoped to eventually become a partner in the company. However, as the only woman manager in a male-dominated company, she knew that there would be some obstacles to overcome.

Laura felt that some of the senior managers were very conservative and did not accept her as an equal. In the quarterly planning meetings, these managers were often inattentive when she spoke and seemed unreceptive to her suggestions for improvements. Several times she proposed an idea that was ignored, and the same idea was later suggested by someone else who received the credit for it.

Laura did not have a mentor in the company to tell people about her skills and help to advance her career. Moreover, she did not feel accepted into the informal network of relationships that provided opportunities to interact with senior managers. She did not like to play golf and was not a member of the exclusive golf club to which many of the male managers belonged. She was not invited to most of the social activities hosted by senior managers for friends and select members of the company.

Laura also felt that the assignment of projects was biased. The high-profile projects were always given to the male managers. When Laura asked her boss for more challenging projects, she was told that the older clients usually preferred to deal with men. Because she was not given the more profitable accounts, her performance numbers did not look as good as the numbers for some of the male managers. Two male managers who had joined the company around the same time she was hired were promoted ahead of her.

Frustrated by the apparent “glass ceiling” at the company, Laura asked to meet with the president to talk about her career. The president was surprised to hear that Laura was unhappy about her advancement in the company. He assured her that she was a valuable employee and should be patient about a promotion. However, after another year with little improvement in how she was treated, Laura resigned from the company. With two friends from graduate school who also felt unappreciated, she formed a new company and served as the chief executive officer. In a relatively short time, this company became highly successful.

Questions

What forms of gender discrimination did Laura experience?

What could Laura have done to overcome the obstacles she encountered?

What could the president have done to create equal opportunity in this company?