Question 1: To what extent do you believe that Texaco's actions will be effective in getting its high-ranking employees to feel less prejudice toward members of minority groups?
Answer: The image of Texaco was significantly tarnished after release of tapes featuring senior executives discussing to destroy some evidence that prove the discriminatory practices of company against African-Americans. After that incident, company adopted various measures to change the behavior of white employees towards black employees. The company made significant changes in recruitment and appraisal processes to avoid any kind of discrimination and giving equal opportunities of growth to all its employees. World-wide criticism and negative environment of people forced Texaco to implement these changes in order to make organization an ethical organization. All the above said changes resulted in responsible behavior of senior management towards African-American employees as well as women. Mentoring of all employees and strict implementation of code of ethics brought significant change in the attitude of white high rank employees. Leadership style is the main driver of organizational culture. Culture of any organization is true reflection of management style and Texaco management realized their mistakes after being criticized world-wide. The change in attitude of leader gets reflected in all employees. All seniors started treating black employees with due dignity. The organization developed a culture that gave respect to all individuals.
Question 2: How severely do you believe Texaco's public image was harmed because of this incident? Analogously, do you believe the company's image will be helped because of its new diversity management efforts?
Answer: The lawsuit and release of tape negatively impacted image of the company. After this incident the stock price of Texaco was reduced by USD 5 per share which caused heavy selling of Texaco shares around USD 1 billion. A significant portion of Texaco stock was owned by institutional investors who were shocked by the incident. They considered such incident as unfortunate and attitude depicted by Texaco seniors very offensive. They said that the Texaco should take immediate actions to deal with such intolerable behavior at workplace. P.I. Bijur, the chairman and CEO of the company designed and implemented effective change plan to improve the organizational culture. The steps taken by Bijur brought various changes in the organization. The culture has improved significantly which is reflected in the performance of the company and results of annual appraisal and hiring processes.
Question 3: What kinds of diversity management efforts do you believe would be most effective at Texaco?
Answer: Ethics and morals play a vital role in the success of any business. Business ethics describes moral values depicted by the organization in its all business processes. Companies convey their values and ethics to all employees by forming code of ethics. Such code of ethics needs to be followed by all employees. Texaco should treat its employees equally without discriminating them on the basis of race, color, religion, gender and class. Texaco should take following steps to make organization a better and healthy place to work: Company should implement strong code of ethics that needs to be followed by all employees. company should follow all laws, rules and regulations set by the authority which prevent employees from any kind of discrimination and inequality; innovative and effective ethical leadership initiatives that make organizational culture healthy and participative; mentoring of all white employees to teach how to behave with other employees in respectful manner; behavior of all senior executives should be monitored and controlled so that they treat all employees fairly; implementation of fair reward, appraisal and recruitment processes. Company should emphasize on achieving shared vision rather than diverting focus on unethical practices. All these steps will help Texaco to form healthy organizational culture that is free from any kind of discrimination, biasness and unethical practices.
Reference
Thomas S. Mulligan & Chris Kraul, 1996. Loss Angeles Times. [Online] Times Available at: [Accessed 27 November 2012].
