Sydney Brian-Peters: A Case Study in Gender and Leadership Issues

Abstract

Sydney Brian-Peters is a mid-level executive at her organization. As a unit head, part of her duties is to promote employees within her unit. Since her unit has been the most profitable cost center in the company there is much interest from upper management on who gets what position within the unit. She recently recommended one of her subordinates to fill a position in her unit. She is now faced with justifying her recommendation.

This case introduces students to the concept of unconscious bias, or what I have termed economics of name. This concept refers to the challenge that minority individuals with ethnic-names – or what are considered by some as foreign names – face in getting employment. Concepts of covering and stay-put career choice are also discussed as challenges facing women as they climb a career ladder in corporate organizations.

Case

Learning Outcomes

This case study is written to expose students to some salient gender and leadership issues facing women, especially minority women, in corporate organizations. The case study will help students to understand and recognize the following:

  • Issues of unconscious discrimination or economics of name.
  • Issues of covering and stay-put career choices.
  • That an organization may be diversified in terms of number, but not inclusive in their management structure.

Background

Sydney Brian-Peters is a very dark-skinned African-American woman. She was born Lakeisha Sydney Washington in the Southwest side of Chicago, Illinois. Sydney’s father (Brian Washington), now retired, worked with the Chicago Park District where he rose to the position of a director who oversaw all district golf courses. Her mother is a teacher with the Chicago Public School system.

Since her youth, her parents had instilled in her and her younger brother the thirst for learning and hard-work. From childhood, Sydney understood that education was an important part to success in life. The Washingtons encouraged their children not only to read and study far and wide, but also to play and be kids. Most of Sydney’s childhood summer holidays were spent roaming the various golf courses in Chicago or at her maternal grandparent’s home in Monroe, Georgia, which was not far from the Monroe Golf and Country Club. Of course, it was natural for her to become an avid golfer. She scored her first hole-in-one on a par 3 at age eight, and has remained an avid golfer since then. By her freshman year in high school, Syd as her family and friends call her, self-taught herself Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, both languages she now speaks very fluently.

Economics of Name (Unconscious Bias)

Syd, officially changed her name to Sydney L. Brian during her second year in college after experiencing an unconscious bias by being discriminated against because of her first name. What I have termed economics of name, which leads to unconscious bias towards people who have “unusual” ethnic sounding names. Such unconscious biases based on an individual’s name as it were limits the individual’s ability to gain meaningful economic employment as evidenced by researchers such as Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004), Fryer and Levitt (2004), and Bertrand (2016). Accounts of such unconscious discrimination are not limited to the US; evidence presented by Immen (2011) shows it to be prevalent in Canada and other countries with a multiethnic population. Furthermore, such discrimination is not limited to North America. For example, a 2009 government sting operation in the United Kingdom reveled that such practices were widespread in Britain (Syal, 2009).

A student worker in the department that Sydney had applied to later informed Syd that she did not get an interview for the campus-based job, because someone thought a “Lakeisha Washington” would bring “a Black-ghetto mentality and attitude” to the department. Research on name-centered discrimination (for example, Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004) reveals that one’s name has an economic impact on one’s chances of being employed, even when such an individual is qualified for the job. Other studies such as that by Kang et al. (2016) show that some minority individuals use “résumé whitening” as a method of enhancing their chances of getting interviewed for a job. According to Kang et al. (2016) résumé whitening is the process by which ethnic minorities remove all indicators of their ethnicity, including ethnic names, from their résumé thus enhancing one’s chances of being considered employable. England also has cases of “whitening” of names by prospective employees (Wallis & Robb, 2012); such cases have also been reported in Australia (North, 2011).

This name-centered discrimination led her to change her name to be more “White” sounding. After much argument with her family, Syd changed her name officially to Sydney L. Brian, changing her middle name to become the first name, and adopting her father’s first name as a last name. Syd argued that whichever last name (Washington or Brian) she used would only be a temporary one since she was expected (by her family tradition) to marry and take her husband’s last name. Also, she noted that she wanted her résumé to speak for her first, so she will be judged on her experience first rather than her “ethnic oriented” name.

Syd is now 36, married with one child. She is a straight-A Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduate of Yale School of Management with a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She works for Rebuspecunia Global Consult (RG Consult), a Chicago-based financial consulting firm that does business in four continents. At RG Consult, Sydney is considered one of the five rising stars. However, Syd often notices the surprised look on peoples’ faces whenever she introduces herself. Sometimes this causes Syd to feel guilty over her name change. She believes that the surprised look stems from people who see her name on paper often think she is White, but on meeting her in person they are taken aback to see a Black lady as the bearer of the name.

She never forgets the shock displayed by some of her interviewers at RG Consult, who she believed, were expecting to see a White female given her name and academic credentials. Being older and wiser she now feels her change of name is a form of betrayal of her race. Being quite pragmatic even at a younger age, Sydney had long concluded that being Black and a female meant she had a “double-strike” against her. She rationalizes that such a “non-Black” sounding name along with her 4.0 Grade Point Average may have helped get her the job offers from RG Consult as well as two other firms even before her final exam at Yale.

Unfortunately, perception biases, a form of unconscious bias (McCormick, 2015), often affect how women and people with minority or ethnic sounding names are accessed or evaluated in the workplace.

Now, after working for RG Consult for more than 10 years, Sydney is head of Unit 1 (Deputy Director level), and has seven employees who report to her.

One Monday, after the usual managers’ meeting, the Director of Human Resources (DHR) informed her he wanted to meet with her to make a decision on her recommendation of Jessica Schumacher for promotion to unit manager. They agreed to meet during the lunch hour at the Director’s office.

The Meeting

At lunch time, Sydney waited in the Director’s office along with other members of management, including the Director of the Mining and Heavy Equipment Manufacturing Group (Sydney’s immediate supervisor), and Mr. James Ohms, the Vice President for Eastern Operations, who oversees the RG Consult business in China, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries. Sydney was shocked to see her boss and her boss’s boss included as part of what she thought was going to be a simple routine meeting to confirm her immediate subordinate.

Mostly she felt ambushed. She thought it was unfair and unethical for the DHR not to let her know about the other people invited to the meeting. Of course, this let her know that this otherwise routine meeting was no longer routine.

At the meeting the DHR, while looking at James Ohms, the Vice President for Eastern Operations, informed Sydney that they wanted to know why she chose Jessica for promotion. He observed that they (again looking at the Vice President for Eastern Operations) thought the position should have gone to Andrew Bell. Andrew Bell has an MBA from Purdue University with a concentration in Finance. He is married with three children ages 10 to 6. He has been with RG Consult for about five years. Before joining RG Consult he had a very successful career with another international financial organization, where he was one of their top financial analysts.

James Ohms chimed in that Andrew has shown he can be a good leader through his work in the firm. He said, he wanted all of them at the meeting to “reason together, on the matter of filling the spot of Unit 1 manager ASAP”. Syd, agreed and said, that is why she recommended Jessica to the spot as soon as the former individual occupying the position resigned. Syd also noted that Jessica has not only been with the firm longer than Andrew, but also has more experience as she has worked in three other units before now. She has also brought in and maintained accounts in excess $5 million for the firm. Syd noted that Andrew has not brought in a new account since joining the firm, though Syd concedes that she hired him (Andrew) not for his account portfolio expertise but for his financial analytical skills.

Mr. Ohms agreed with Sydney’s summation, but observed that Jessica’s obligations outside of the office are expected to expand in the coming years and that he thought it will serve her best not to be burdened with extra responsibilities. Sydney assumed that Mr. Ohms was indirectly refereeing to, without directly saying so, Jessica getting married in the coming year. To this Syd observed that both Jessica and Andrew have responsibilities outside of work, and both seem to be carrying-on without any complaints or slacking on their duties. Besides, she notes that the decision of whether Jessica can carry extra responsibility was Jessica’s to make. Sydney’s thinking was that this was not about extra responsibility, but simply about boys taking care of boys. This thinking made her more resolved to ensure that Jessica got the position. She also surmised that her capitulating to the Vice President was a compromise of her authority as a deputy director and head of her unit. She feels this also brings into question her own ability to take charge of her unit, which she has run more successfully than other units in the Eastern Operations division. In fact, in the last two years her unit has been the most profitable cost center in the entire firm.

She reminded everyone at the meeting that for more than twenty years, the tradition at RG Consult was that the unit heads in consultation with their directors recruited, appointed, and promoted members of their unit with no questions asked. She then asked, why this tradition is not being honored this time. Rather than answer her question, the Vice President asked her to justify to him why Jessica should get the position. Aghast, Syd asked him to rationalize why Andrew should get the position? Syd believes it is inappropriate that she had to defend Jessica’s promotion, not that the reasons are hard to come by, while Andrew’s criterion for promotion was taken for granted. Actually, she had already done a comparison of the two candidates before deciding on Jessica (see Table 1), but for sake of principle she decided not to share that. She objectively believes that Jessica’s qualifications are obvious. Sydney believes that Jessica faces the same racial stereotypes as herself. Jessica is of mixed race: her father is White and her mother is of Japanese origin, and she, Jessica, has distinct Japanese features.

Table 1. Comparison of Andrew and Jessica as candidates for promotion.

Factors considered for promotion

Andrew

Jessica

Education

Master of Business Administration (MBA) – Finance major

Bachelor of Science (BS) –Finance

MBA

Master of Science – Mining Engineering

BS – Mechanical Engineering

Years at RG Consult

6 years

10 years

Past experience

4 years prior to RG Consult

2 years prior to RG Consult

Experience within RG Consult

All within Unit 1

2 years in Germany, one year in Japan, and 7 with Unit 1

Extras

Fluent in English and Spanish

Fluent in English, Japanese, German, and Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese

Accounts brought to RG

None (expertise lies in financial analysis)

6 different accounts

Cover or Stay-put

Covering, a term coined by Goffman (1963), is a deliberate attempt by a people with social stigma to push such stigmas to the background. Yoshino (2006) further broadened this term to include situations in which a member of a minority group avoids displaying their minority identity, or may make a conscious effort to not openly associate with members of her or his subgroup in order to fit into the larger whole. Covering also includes situations in which a minority person acts so that she or he is not seen as being biased towards people of their subgroup. Yoshino discussed four types of covering as follows: (1) altering physical appearance to match the main group; (2) avoiding overt affiliation with members of one’s own subgroup; (3) minimizing or not advocating for members of one’s own subgroup; and (4) avoiding open association with members of one’s own subgroup.

Covering may account for why female executives may openly support male candidates for promotion rather than a female in order to show that they are not being gender biased. Male executives in corporate organizations, as exhibited by Mr. Ohms, appear to give no second thoughts to backing a male candidate, while requiring a female executive backing a female candidate to offer objective reasons for backing the female candidate.

In recent years Sydney had decided not to cover anymore. She recalls in her younger years forcing herself to wear a wig or have her hair set in a perm to fit in. Sydney was the best golfer in her organization. She remembers being told by her male colleagues that she was too aggressive on the golf course during one of her organization’s family fun events. But in truth she did not bring her A-game to the game, but she did not think the men were holding back their game.

Before making her decision on who to promote, Sydney had had private conversations – informal interviews – with both Jessica and Andrew. She understood from her conversation with Andrew that he was an involved parent, and also a hardworking dedicated employee. Andrew reassured Syd of his commitment to the company and his desire to give his best at each level of the organization he works at. In their conversation, Jessica made it very clear that she, like Sydney, was not going to be a “stay-put” career lady. She offered that her fiancé and herself are both focused on their careers for now and are determined to rise to the highest level possible in their respective organizations.

“Staying-put” refers to the preference by certain individuals (often females) to stay-put at the mid-level position of their career in order to avoid added job responsibilities that could disrupt their work–life balance. Surveys by both the McKinsey Company (2009) and the Pew Research Center (2015) show that such “stay-put” (sometime referred to as “Ratchet back” or “Opt-Out Moms”) females are sufficiently highly confident of their skills, performance, and abilities to rise to higher positions. But they often decline opportunities for growth in the workplace, since having fewer responsibilities at the workplace serves a greater purpose for them in order to achieve a greater work–life balance

Discussion Questions

  • Put yourself in Sydney’s position, and consider all the known facts, biases, feelings, etc., as disclosed in the case. What decision would you make regarding promoting ether Andrew or Jessica?
  • Do you think that it was unethical for the DHR not to inform Sydney that her bosses will be in attendance at the meeting?
  • While one cannot conclude on what is on someone else’s mind, what conclusions can one reach regarding the DHR’s non-disclosure of the meeting attendees?
  • The concept of “stay-put” career occurs in many formats. It may involve not accepting promotion to avoid more responsibilities, parents not accepting better jobs if they involve relocation from the children’s school district, or added time requirements that force an employee to be away from a dependent family member. Have you or someone you know made a “stay-put” career decision? Was it worth it in the long run?
  • Reflecting on your own personal experience, have you personally had to cover?
  • Reflecting on your own experience, have you been in a situation similar to any of the key individuals mentioned in the case? How did you handle your own situation? If you have not experienced such situations, use the experience of someone you know.
  • Extra research: search the internet for any current news story of gender-based discrimination. Was the case resolved, and how? What lessons can you as a leader learn from the internet news story?

Further Readings and Resources

Bertrand, M. (2016, May 21). This problem has a name: Discrimination. Chicago Booth Review. Retrieved from http://review.chicagobooth.edu/behavioral-science/2016/article/problem-has-name-discrimination
Bertrand, M. , & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. The American Economic Review, 94(4), 9911013.
Cosgrove-Mather, B. (2003, September 29). ‘Black’ Names A Resume Burden? CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-names-a-resume-burden/
Flynn, J. , Heath, K. , & Holt, M. D. (2013, January 3). Six Paradoxes Women Leaders Face in 2013. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/01/six-paradoxes-women-leaders-fa
Fryer, R. G. , & Levitt, S. D. (2004). The causes and consequences of distinctively black names. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 767805.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Immen, W. (2011, November 17). How an ethnic-sounding name may affect the job hunt. The Globe and Mail (Canada). Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/how-an-ethnic-sounding-name-may-affect-the-job-hunt/article555082/
Livingston, G. (2014, May 7). FactTank: Opting out? About 10% of highly educated moms are staying at home. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/07/opting-out-about-10-of-highly-educated-moms-are-staying-at-home/
McCormick, H. (2015). The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC –Executive Development. Retrieved from https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/~/media/Files/documents/executive-development/unc-white-paper-the-real-effects-of-unconscious-bias-in-the-workplace-Final
McKinsey Company. (2009). Leadership through the crisis and after: McKinsey Global Survey results. McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/leadership-through-the-crisis-and-after-mckinsey-global-survey-results
North, A. (2011, July 18). Man Takes Fake “White” Name To Test Job Discrimination. Jezebel.com. Retrieved fromhttp://jezebel.com/5822293/man-takes-fake-white-name-to-test-job-discrimination
Pew Research Center. (2015, January 14). Women and Leadership. Pew Research Center: Social & Demographic Trends. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/01/14/women-and-leadership/
Syal, R. (2009, October 17). Undercover job hunters reveal huge race bias in Britain’s workplaces. The Gurdian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism-discrimination-employment-undercover
Tahmincioglu, E. (2009, November 23). Like it or not, name can impact your career. Careers on NBCNEWS.com. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34063244/ns/business-careers/t/it-or-not-name-can-impact-your-career/#.WUfhVGgrKUk
Wallis, H. , & Robb, S. (2012, December 7). Workplace discrimination prompts ‘whitened’ job applications. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20608039
Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering: The hidden assault on our civil rights. New York, NY: Random House.
Yoshino, K. , & Smith, C. (2013). Uncovering talent: A new model of inclusion. Westlake, TX: Deloitte University Press.

References

Bertrand, M. (2016, May 21). This problem has a name: Discrimination. Chicago Booth Review. Retrieved from http://review.chicagobooth.edu/behavioral-science/2016/article/problem-has-name-discrimination
Bertrand, M. , & Mullainathan, S. (2004). Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. The American Economic Review, 94(4), 9911013.
Fryer, R. G. , & Levitt, S. D. (2004). The causes and consequences of distinctively black names. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 767805.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Immen, W. (2011, November 17). How an ethnic-sounding name may affect the job hunt. The Globe and Mail (Canada). Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/how-an-ethnic-sounding-name-may-affect-the-job-hunt/article555082/
Kang, S. K. , DeCelles, K. A. , Tilcsik, A. , & Jun, S. (2016). Whitened résumés: Race and self-presentation in the labor market. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61(3), 469502.
McCormick, H. (2015). The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC – Executive Development. Retrieved from https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/~/media/Files/documents/executive-development/unc-white-paper-the-real-effects-of-unconscious-bias-in-the-workplace-Final
McKinsey Company . (2009). Leadership through the crisis and after: McKinsey Global Survey results. McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/leadership-through-the-crisis-and-after-mckinsey-global-survey-results
North, A. (2011, July 18). Man Takes Fake “White” Name To Test Job Discrimination. Jezebel.com. Retrieved from http://jezebel.com/5822293/man-takes-fake-white-name-to-test-job-discrimination
Pew Research Center. (2015, January 14). Women and Leadership. Pew Research Center: Social & Demographic Trends. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/01/14/women-and-leadership/
Syal, R. (2009, October 17). Undercover job hunters reveal huge race bias in Britain’s workplaces. The Gurdian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/18/racism-discrimination-employment-undercover
Wallis, H. , & Robb, S. (2012, December 7). Workplace discrimination prompts ‘whitened’ job applications. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20608039
Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering: The hidden assault on our civil rights. New York, NY: Random House.

This case was prepared for inclusion in Sage Business Cases primarily as a basis for classroom discussion or self-study, and is not meant to illustrate either effective or ineffective management styles. Nothing herein shall be deemed to be an endorsement of any kind. This case is for scholarly, educational, or personal use only within your university, and cannot be forwarded outside the university or used for other commercial purposes.

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