[CEO Ethics ]

Ethical Case Study Analysis

An analysis of decision making ethics by company chief executives with an emphasis on:

The Google Diversity Controversy

Ethical Leadership Case Study Analysis

Anaylize the decisions made by CEO's in the wake of ethcal delimmas , as well as the impact and effectiveness of the choices made.

What is the Google Diversity Controversy?

Internal and External Impact

Ceo Response

Connecting Course Theme, Corporate Social Responsibility & Creating an Ethical Solution for:

Equality

Diversity & Inclusion

The Google Diversity Controversy

Memo Leak Sparks Outrage

In August 2017 a memo titled, "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber", leaked from an internal google forum, began to make its way around the internet prompting an uproar over the contents which characterized a disdain for the companies diversity & inclusion efforts, while criticizing the companies gender equailty bias through fact, fallacy and stereotypical views. The memo sparked a great debate into equalty, inclusion and diversity within google and the freedoms of speech within companies everywhere. Google's CEO Sudar Pichai became the subject of ethical review when he chose to fire the author a former google engineer James Damore.

Key Controversial Memo Takeaways

James Damore's memo described an ideology he believed catered to inclusion and diversity that focused to much attention on under represented groups, minorities and women, as oppose to the company as a whole. Below are a few important statements that would ultimately shape both public opinion and executive response:

Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business...men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.
When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.

In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

Internal and External Impact

Damore's statements though defended to be in good intent for clear and decisive change in the venture for equality has internal, company enviroment, impacts and external, court of public review, impacts both in favor and against his memo.

Internal Impact

Minority and Women employees reported instances of micro- aggressions before and following the memo release.
Employees offened by the memo raised the concern as to why Damore felt okay sharing his opinion within a work forum, increasing an atmosphere of toxicity where people can say and do as they please.

Does Dissent to company ideology prove viable grounds for reprimand up to and including termination?
Manager Blacklisting of employees with opposite political and societal views.
Employee diversity programs such as Soujourn, a well received implementation were ended.

** Within Google, a few sympathetic employees were dismayed to see Damore so vehemently criticized by their colleagues. In a poll distributed on a mailing list dedicated to discussing the manifesto, opinion broke down differently than it did in non-anonymous Google Plus posts:

External Impact

Memo sparked outrage within Google and among the tech society in Silicone Valley , already a hot topic of gender bias , male dominance and sexual advances in lew of monetary superiority.
Supports and Dissenters of Damore's Memo still supported his right to freely express his controversial view and rallied as allies to his firing in the defense of free speech.

CEO Response

Google CEO Sundar Pichai took swift action against the sexist and stereotypical statements made in Damore's memo, even distributing his own memo titled "Our Words Matter" scrutitinizing the rhetoric and asserting "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK." Pichai would go on to fire Damore and schedule a town hall meeting to address the memo and tech diversity concerns, of which was cancelled by the company later ironically stating indifference as the reason for its cancellation. Regardless Pachai and Danielle Brown, VP of Diversity & Inclusion, stood by the decsion to release Damore stating his beliefs , nor political agenda where the reason but rather his disregard and breaking of the companies code of conduct in the statements he made on an interneal company forum.

While Pichai stood by his decision to fire Damore it is important to remember that not all feedback was well received after the choice was made public. Here area few statements of dissenting public opinion sighting assumed ethical infringement.

"The fella who posted that is extremely brave. We need more people standing up against the insanity. Otherwise 'Diversity and Inclusion' which is essentially a pipeline from Women's and African Studies into Google, will ruin the company" - Anaynomous
"Inclusion is not a zero-sum game. Making your team or organization a more inclusive place for X does not mean discrimination against not X" - Parisa Tabiz
"A diverse, tolerant workplace is one in which employees are able to voice their opinion - not be fired for expressing them" - Index on Censorship

Course Theme and Corporate Social Responsibility

Throughout INT 400 we have been exposed to inconvenient truths of those in oppressed positions within the literature of Paolo Freire. Below you'll find a key theme expressed within this literature. Furthermore, corporate responsibility, the sustainability of ethics in an organization's activities and operations to maintain viable longevity, will be discussed as it applies to the CEO decision. Ultimately, we will take a look at alternate solutioins that may have encited a better overall outcome.

Literary Connection

Paulo Freire recognized that incorrect ideologies and sectarian myths were a prevalent problem in keeping the oppressed away from choice or control. He states,"Perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern man is his domination by the force of these myths and his manipulation by organized advertising , ideological or otherwise." Damore's beliefs, though not wrong in his right to express them, directly identify with a self- procliamed ideology, where in fact he believes himself and others who identify with him, in this case conservative white men, are actually the oppressed minority within google regardless of the 80% majority in engineering jobs for his identifying group at Google during that time.

Yonatan Zunger, a former Google employee sharing sharing the same identifying group as Damore, who had only recetly left the company, shared his views from the perspective of having been a distinguished engineer — an extremely high-level position at Google. In his response he informs Damore," what you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas. And worse than simply thinking these things or saying them in private, you’ve said them in a way that’s tried to legitimize this kind of thing across the company, causing other people to get up and say “wait, is that right?”

Freire goes on to say " false perception occurs when a change a change in objective reality would threaten the individual or class interests of the perciever...rationalizaton as a defense mechanism coincides in the end with subjectivism. A fact which is not denied but whose truths are rationalized loses its objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth created in the defense of the class of the perceiver.

Corporate Social Responsibility

&

Alternative Solution for Diversity and Inclusion

"Building a world where everyone can belong means ensuring that no one is left out and each person has what they need to thrive. We don't yet know how we'll get there, but we know it can only be together."

Chief Diversity officer Melanie Parker, Google

As the CEO of Google Pichai had the responsibility to take meaningful action addressing gender inequality, diversity and inclusion even after releasing Damore from the company.

Corporate social responsibility is a business model that helps companies be socially accountable to its employees, shareholders and the public.

Since 2018 Google has released a diversity report character of the employee make-up for that year and continued to find alternative solutions to inclusion efforts that can include the majority. Google Belonging, a domain dedicated to advertising their efforts, describes the current and long term goals the company intends to achieve with regard to equality, diversity and inclusion.

Visit: https://about.google/belonging/

Creating an Ethical Solutions

The efforts made by Google to address mounting gender inequality in the tech industry of Silicon Valley, as well as, at their own front door were in effect prior to the memos release and defensively done so in good intent. It is my opinion that the company took the right steps to combat the issues it faced just in the process. Fostering group discussion and leadership programs for under respresented groups solely, however, comes with eventual micro-aggressions and as history has shown predjudical ideologies that exclude the facts behind their creation. It's important to create an enviroment where employees can freely express their opinion without persecution while maintaining a line of respect among dissenters of that opinion. Moreover, extending invitation from the in-groups to join in the discussion and implementation of new programs so that their voices are heard in change will help to make a long term plan that can be adjusted to the tune of all voices and goals, even if they are indifferent, they wll be aware and hopully understand.

Works Cited

Konger, Kate. "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated]." Gizmodo,

5 Aug. 2017, pp. 1-14, gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320.

Mann, Sonya. "Google's Other Ugly Secret: Some Managers Keep Blacklists." Inc., 7 Aug. 2017, www.inc.com/sonya-

mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.html.

Romano, Aja. "Google has fired the engineer whose anti-diversity memo reflects a divided tech culture." Vox, 8 Aug. 2017,

www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/8/16106728/google-fired-engineer-anti-diversity-memo.

Wittenberg-Cox, Aviva. "Firing James Damore Could Be a Setback For Googles Diversity Goals." Havard Business Review, 10

Aug. 2, inhbr.org/2017/08/firing-james-damore-could-be-a-setback-for-googles-diversity-goal

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