MGT 219: Assignment 1
In this essay, I will be discussing the case study chosen which is the KPMG US gender discrimination lawsuit and my reasons for choosing it. Even though we live in the 21st century gender discrimination is still very prominent in organisational culture today, thus the themes: ‘Organisational Culture’ and ‘Gender and Sexuality’ have been picked for this essay. These themes and the reason for them being picked to analyse this case study will be explained in this essay. Theories on ‘Organisational Culture’ and ‘Sexuality’ will be used to analyse the relationship of themes to the case study. These will include Schein’s Three Levels of Culture and the ‘Locker Room’ (Sinclair, 2005) theory of sexuality. The analysis will be …show more content…
Although the actual lawsuit began in 2011 (Simpson, 2016), it is ongoing and still arises in the media in 2016. This shows that the problem is deeply rooted in the company, and because there have been no steps taken from the company’s side to solve the problem, it is growing. This is evident from Simpson’s (2016) article where he states that more than 10,000 employees have been estimated to be part of the class action suit. It began with Donna Kassman who filed a suit against KPMG for cutting her salary by $20,000 during her maternity leave (Simpson, 2016) and “removing her from the promotional track” (Cohn, 2016). Kassman states that the reason behind this was that her tone and direct approach were complained about by two male employees (Cohn, 2016). Furthermore, five new plaintiffs who joined also claim that there is a “hostile work environment” (Simpson, 2016) where female employees are “underpaid, rarely promoted to leadership roles” (Simpson, 2016) and when they are, rather than being rewarded with partnership, they are instead promoted to non-partnership roles such as “career managers at a drastically lower compensation levels.” (Cohn, 2016) Thus the promotion of women to senior positions is lower than the industry average (Simpson, 2016). As anticipated, KPMG denies all allegations, even in the face of the growing support for the case and the claim by the attorneys that gender discrimination at KPMG is “truly systematic” (Simpson, 2016). This demonstrates that it is a widespread problem which is not being addressed and is one of the reasons this case study has been chosen. It provides a lot of material that will be analysed to find out how deeply rooted gender discrimination is in the company and how its relevance to the organisational culture. Will changing organisational culture provide the required
In this essay, I will be discussing the case study chosen which is the KPMG US gender discrimination lawsuit and my reasons for choosing it. Even though we live in the 21st century gender discrimination is still very prominent in organisational culture today, thus the themes: ‘Organisational Culture’ and ‘Gender and Sexuality’ have been picked for this essay. These themes and the reason for them being picked to analyse this case study will be explained in this essay. Theories on ‘Organisational Culture’ and ‘Sexuality’ will be used to analyse the relationship of themes to the case study. These will include Schein’s Three Levels of Culture and the ‘Locker Room’ (Sinclair, 2005) theory of sexuality. The analysis will be …show more content…
Although the actual lawsuit began in 2011 (Simpson, 2016), it is ongoing and still arises in the media in 2016. This shows that the problem is deeply rooted in the company, and because there have been no steps taken from the company’s side to solve the problem, it is growing. This is evident from Simpson’s (2016) article where he states that more than 10,000 employees have been estimated to be part of the class action suit. It began with Donna Kassman who filed a suit against KPMG for cutting her salary by $20,000 during her maternity leave (Simpson, 2016) and “removing her from the promotional track” (Cohn, 2016). Kassman states that the reason behind this was that her tone and direct approach were complained about by two male employees (Cohn, 2016). Furthermore, five new plaintiffs who joined also claim that there is a “hostile work environment” (Simpson, 2016) where female employees are “underpaid, rarely promoted to leadership roles” (Simpson, 2016) and when they are, rather than being rewarded with partnership, they are instead promoted to non-partnership roles such as “career managers at a drastically lower compensation levels.” (Cohn, 2016) Thus the promotion of women to senior positions is lower than the industry average (Simpson, 2016). As anticipated, KPMG denies all allegations, even in the face of the growing support for the case and the claim by the attorneys that gender discrimination at KPMG is “truly systematic” (Simpson, 2016). This demonstrates that it is a widespread problem which is not being addressed and is one of the reasons this case study has been chosen. It provides a lot of material that will be analysed to find out how deeply rooted gender discrimination is in the company and how its relevance to the organisational culture. Will changing organisational culture provide the required