Northern Industries asked you, a consultant in organizational change and diversity management, to help them resolve some racial issues that, according to President Jim Fisher, are "festering" in their manufacturing plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. Northern Industries is a family- owned enterprise that manufactures greeting cards and paper and plastic holiday decorations. It employs 125 people full time including African- Americans and Asians. About 80 percent of the full- time workforce is female.

During the peak production months of September and January ( to produce orders primarily for Christmas/ Hanukah and Mother's Day), the company runs a second shift and adds about 50 part-time workers, most of whom are women and minorities.

All orders are batch runs made to customer specifications. In a period of a week, it is not unusual for 70 different orders to be filled requiring different paper stocks, inks, plastics, and setups. Since these orders vary greatly in size, the company has a long- term policy of giving priority to high- volume customers and processing other orders on a first-come first- served basis. Half a dozen of the company's major customers have been doing business with Northern for more than 20 years, having been signed on by Jim Fisher's father (now retired). To begin your orientation to the company, Fisher asks his production manager, Walter Beacon, to take you around the plant. Beacon points out the production areas responsible for each of the various steps in the manufacture of a greeting card, from purchasing to printing to quality control and shipping. The plant is clean, but the two large printing rooms, each the workplace for about 25 workers, are quite noisy. You catch snatches of the employees' conversations there, but you cannot figure out what language they are speaking. In the shipping and receiving department you notice that most workers are African- American. Beacon confirms that 8 out of 10 of the workers in that department are African- American males, and that their boss, Adam Wright, is also African- American.

It has been previously arranged that you would attend a meeting of top management in order to get a flavor of the organizational culture. The president introduces you as a diversity consultant and notes that several of his managers have expressed concerns about potential racial problems in the company.

He says, "Each of the minority groups sticks together. The African- Americans and Orientals rarely mix.

Recently there has been a problem with theft of finished product, especially on the second shift, and we had to fire a Thai worker." Fisher has read a lot lately about "managing diversity" and hopes you will be able to help the company. Several managers nod their heads in agreement.

Fisher then turns his executive team to its daily business. The others present are the general manager, personnel manager (the only woman), sales manager, quality control manager, production manager (Beacon), and the shipping and receiving manager (the only nonwhite manager). Soon an angry debate ensues between the sales and shipping/ receiving managers. It seems that orders are not being shipped quickly enough, according to the sales manager, and several complaints have been received from smaller customers about the quality of the product. The shipping/ receiving manager argues that he needs more hands to do the job, and that the quality of incoming supplies is lousy. While this debate continues, the other managers are silent and seemingly uncomfortable. Finally one of them attemots to break up the argument with a joke about his wife. Fisher and the other men laugh loudly, and the conversation shifts to other topics.

QUESTIONS: (Answer these from the perspective of you being the organizational change and diversity management)

1. What was your first clue from the case that Northern had diversity issues?

a. Did you have any opinions prior to your meeting with top management to get "a flavor of the organizational culture"?

i. Assuming you were of Japanese-American heritage, was there anything said in that meeting that could have offended you?

b.

What IS the current organizational culture?

c. How do you think that culture has become to be as it is?

What recommendations would you make to Northern's leaders to help them move toward successfully managing diversity issues?

If you were the shipping and receiving or personnel manager, how do you think you would feel about your job? Discuss some of the challenges you might face at Northern.