After graduating from a prestigious business school, Laura Kravitz accepted a job at Madison, Jones and Conklin,
Question:
After graduating from a prestigious business school, Laura Kravitz accepted a job at Madison, Jones and Conklin, a midsize company that does accounting and consulting projects for corporate clients. After a series of successful assignments as a member of a project team, Laura was promoted to a team manager position with wider responsibilities. Laura was confident in her qualities. Other team managers seemed to respect her, and clients were happy with the projects she was managing. With this record of success, Laura hoped to eventually become a partner in the company. But as the only female manager in a male-dominated company, she knew there were some hurdles to overcome.
Laura felt that some senior executives were too conservative and did not accept her as an equal. At quarterly planning meetings, these managers were often careless when he spoke and seemed disinterested in suggestions for improvement. She suggested an idea that was ignored several times, and the same idea was later suggested by someone else, and the idea was praised, she.
Laura didn't have a mentor at the company to tell people about her skills and help her advance in her career. Moreover, she did not feel accepted into the informal network of relationships that provided the opportunity to interact with senior executives. She didn't like to play golf, and she wasn't a member of the elite golf club that many male managers belong to. She wasn't invited to many of the social events that senior executives hold for friends and elite members of the company.
Laura also felt that the assignment of projects was biased. High-profile projects have always been given to male executives. When Laura asked her boss for more challenging projects, she was told that older clients generally preferred working with men. Because he was not given more profitable accounts, his performance figures did not look as good as those of some male executives. Two male executives who joined the company at the time of his hiring were promoted before him.
Tired of the "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 not happy with her progress at the company. She reassured him that she is a valued employee and should be patient with promotions. However, after a year with little improvement in how she was treated, Laura resigned from the company. Feeling unappreciated from her master's degree, she founded a new company with two of her friends and served as chief executive officer. In a relatively short time, this company has become quite successful.
Questions
What kind of gender discrimination did Laura experience?
What could Laura do to overcome the obstacles she faced?
What could the president have done to create equal opportunity in this company?
Fundamentals of Cost Accounting
ISBN: 978-0077398194
3rd Edition
Authors: William Lanen, Shannon Anderson, Michael Maher