Road to Hell by Teresa Ortega - Book Report/Review Example

Case Analysis of “The Road to Hell” Executive Summary The case Road to Hell is written in the perspective of racial discrimination which happens unintentionally in an organization called Caribbean Bauxite Company. This case brings up the Human Resource issues in management of the organizations. It creates platform to learn about how to handle such kind of racial issues which can affect the efficiency of the organization. It develops so many internal issues within the organizations which hamper the harmony among the employees and attacks the value system of the organization. In this case, racial issues have been occurred between John Baker and Mathew Rennalls during the time of the interview. These are chief engineer and successive chief engineer of the company respectively. The solutions of the issues involved in the case will be solved under legal, behavioral aspect of the diversity audits. Introduction to the Case This case “Road to Hell” describes two characters with different personalities, backgrounds and points of view and how interaction takes place between these two characters.  John Baker, he is a chief engineer of Caribbean Bauxite Company of Barracania.  As it is mentioned in the case that John Baker is an English expatriate, this case will be analyzed after assuming that he is an American and born in Canada.  (Ortega n.d.) As mentioned in the case John Baker has an edge in working overseas in a multinational company because he is experienced in understanding the psychology of local staff members. As a part of the succession planning John Baker was working to prepare Matt Rennalls for the post of chief engineer.  Matt Rennalls, he is a well educated Barracania’s professional and young engineer who is representing the new generation of patriotic.  Rennalls is a student at London University from past four years and his education made him sensitive to political, racial and equality issues involving relations between his culture, race and western influence.   In this case, these two characters John Baker and Matt Rennalls had meetings and the last meeting ended up in a disaster.  As John Baker was planning to make him cheief engineer but Instead of accepting the position, Rennalls turns in his resignation,, as he was insulted by John’s farewell interview and advice.  Because of this incident John Baker got confused and he thought that he might have said something wrong. He also puts the future of the company’s relations with its regional staff and authorities in jeopardy. Issues Identifications As the general conception is that culture, race and religion affect the psychology and thought process of a person. But In this case there are several examples of how people from different cultures and backgrounds do not take diversity into consideration.  These people evaluate and measure other people on scales and perceptions and so many times this lead to serious misunderstanding and conflicts between personalities.  John Baker was aware of the sensitivity of Matt about political views, racial issues and intolerance to any racial discrimination with his people. But, at the time of interview John made a mistake by interviewing him from his own European perspective.  Unintentionally John Baker became a little bit offensive by giving some historical and personal views.  For Matt all these point of views and suggestions were totally inappropriate.  Through the interview, John Baker was continuously emphasized the importance and leading position of European staff in the company.  As mentioned in that while interviewing Matt Rennalls he portrayed that he need to better cooperate with this leadership.  He presented an example regarding European culture on a pedestal of 300 years of development and left Barracania at the bottom of the human history.  John Baker presented a behavior of a racist, even though he would be astonished by this conclusion. Unintentional and unconscious motivations for behavior are as powerful as intentional and conscious behavior.  Analysis will be supported by theory of Critical Race Theory.  Although John Baker was not intentionally behaving as a racist, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. . (Muinov n.d.) Short, medium and long term impact The racism issues in an organization impact on the overall behavior, attitude, psychology and mind set of the employees working in that organization. Indirectly it affects the working behaviors and capability of the employees. It creates a situation of dissatisfaction and partiality among employees which harms the production capacity of the employees. Employees develop a feeling of distrust and negligence of their interest by the management. Under the issues of Employment empowerment and employment equity theory, issues like racism creates a deeper impact on the values and ethics of the organizations, on which the company have been established. This attracts a lot of legal issues and lawsuits which can be filed against the company. The overall credibility and reputation of the organization is on stake. These kinds of partiality will not attract a lot of talented people in the organization and then this can be a bottleneck for the growth of the organization. Recommendation Critical Race Theory The case has been analyzed under the purview of critical race theory (CRT), which perceives the perspectives of John Baker as a racist.  On the basis of the facts it can be inferred that Rennalls was accurate in his evaluation of the interview and the resignation of Rennalls was completely logical from the perspective of Critical Race Theory. (Critical Race Theory n.d.) Americans are used to to viewing racism issues as civil rights issue.  People take hard actions against.  European and American societies both have many laws and regulations which classify discrimination and racial issues and putting out legal consequences for violating them.  People should feel protected against discrimination based on race or color of skin. (Richard Delgado n.d.)  Racism can come in many forms and shapes and it cannot always be covered by law. This is the reason why actions of John Baker and Rennall from a perspective which is other than the dominant and legalistic approach.  Critical Race Theory is a brilliant model for this kind of speculations. John Baker’s behavior is pure racism. Baker is completely wrong.  Although baker might have had good intentions for Rennalls, but he pretended and portrayed racist orientation. (Muinov n.d.) Under Human Resource Management racism is a big issue and under the rule of employment equity it does matter a lot. One survey about the racial minorities in US doesn’t have equal job opportunities with non-Hispanic whites.  Another survey reports that minorities have too little power influencing government policy and employment rules.        As per the definitions of term racism, there are several points included in this. Some of them are mentioned below. When - I. One group believes that they are superior from others II. A group has the power to carry out racist behavior against others III. This behavior affects multiple groups (Solorzano 2000) Critical Race Theory model has five elements.  Which are- I. Central nature of race and racism II. A challenge to dominant ideology III. A commitment to social justice IV. The central nature of knowledge that comes from experience V. An interdisciplinary perspective (Solorzano 2000)  Now these five points will be described one by one and examined under the purview of this case study”The Road to Hell.” In this case the central nature is the resignation letter given by.  The challenge to the dominant ideology was of Rennalls approach to corporate culture of the Caribbean Bauxite Company.  Barracania is newly independent country and bauxite is a key resource for the country.  Regarding the commitment to social justice Rennalls seems committed.  Matt Rennalls' resignation letter reinforces the centrality of knowledge from experience.  In this case it is a direct, personal, real-life conflict between these two people.  Lastly this is a meaningful case study because it allows an interdisciplinary approach. In this case study these above mentioned five basic elements of the Critical Race Theory. In this case race is a central theme, and this central theme can take four dimensions: 1. It has micro and macro elements 2. It has institutional and individual forms 3. It has conscious and unconscious elements 4. It has a cumulative impact on both an individual and groups ((Solorzano 2000) All four dimensions of the CRT emphasis on the centrality of race are present and testify to the unconscious nature of racism. John Baker believes that it was Rennalls’ repressed sense of race consciousness that prevented a close relationship between them.  CRT offers an unconventional explanation where Baker is a racist, and his racism was evident to Rennalls resignation. (Solorzano 2000) Diversity Audits One solution to this as problems involving diversity is a diversity audits. Ideally, companies want to use diversity in the work force to increase productivity and increase profits but companies want to avoid legal problems also.  In this case an audit team should visits the company site and should conducts one-on-one interviews with employees and management staff members. They should interview at least 10% of the employees.  These interviews should be confidential and feedback from the audit should be provided to the management do they can solve these issues in the future. This audit gives a chance to employees to speak up about their issues with no partiality. Proper law suits should be filed against any discrimination. It will enhance productivity because employees will feel a better work place to work in.  (Grensing-Pophal 2001) Caribbean Bauxite Company should take a diversity audit just to know what is going inside the organization because it is tough for a multinational corporation to keep eye on its operations. Caribbean Bauxite Company may be in danger of being nationalized by the newly independent Barracania, so confidentiality and discrimination lawsuits are lesser worries. (Grensing-Pophal 2001) Summary Just to summarize this case "Road to Hell" this has been written by Gareth Evans. I would like to say that this case made us to have another look at our views towards racism issues in modern society.  Often enough these issues can not be fully covered by standard legalistic approach and need a deeper research to prove that racism has been a cause of the major problem within a community, organization or a whole society. CRT has helped us justify our position that unintentional racism by John Baker caused the conflict within the organization and resignation of one of the key employees, Matt Rennalls.   We used three characteristics of racism in the analysis of the characters' behavior and found that all five elements of CTR could be applied to this case study. The central nature of race and racism element seemed to have most application to the racism problem in the organization described in the "Road to Hell". As shown by this case study, racism is a serious issue which organizations should be aware of and use all possible methods to prevent racism driven conflicts from happening.  One of the options is performing periodic diversity audits.  While this method can be effective, some matters such as legal consequences and validity should be evaluated.  ***** Bibliography Critical Race Theory. http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/People/Faculty/Syllabi/socy729B_pcollins.pdf (accessed 2009). Grensing-Pophal. "A balancing act on diversity audits." November 30, 2001. (accessed 2009). Muinov, Pat Artz & Timur. Case Analysis of “The Road to Hell”. http://academic2.bellevue.edu/~partz/portfolio/mba_633_case_analysis.html (accessed 2009). Ortega, Teresa. Road to Hell: A Case Study. http://www.insequence.org/2006/11/road_to_hell_a_case_study_1.html (accessed 2009). Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory. Solorzano, D., Ceja, M., &Yosso, T. "The Journal of Negro Education - Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate: The experiences of African American college students." 2000. (accessed 2009). Read More