Cisco Systems Inc. (Cisco) was a modern technology company with a culturally diverse workforce. In 2008, it embarked on a plan to establish “a culture built on fairness, dignity and respect, free from bias, discrimination and negative behavior.” However, despite those efforts, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing brought a legal claim against Cisco in June 2020 alleging workplace discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on caste hierarchy among Indian employees at the workplace. According to the claim, the employee had brought his grievance to Cisco’s notice, but Cisco failed to satisfactorily recognize and remedy the situation. What, if anything, had gone wrong at Cisco, and what could other firms learn from Cisco’s attempts to alleviate workplace harassment, hostility, and unequal outcomes stemming from casteism?
In the hotel industry, the reuse of towels is considered a main step toward reducing hotels’ high carbon footprint. Windermere Manor, a private, high-end hotel, has established a routine to encourage its guests to reuse towels; however, the hotel’s towel-replacement rate exceeds its towel-reuse rate. The intended routine for identifying towels for reuse is not being followed, even by the hotels’ own housekeeping staff. The hotel's general manager examines the reasons for the breakdown of routine and considers ways of correcting the situation.
This case describes the measurement and evaluation of high performance principles of people management in a retail bank by a consulting company. This case serves as a platform for students to deliberate on what is involved in an organization's quest to achieve competitive success through its workforce. A unique strength of the case is that students are asked to quantitatively test their arguments with data provided in an Excel spreadsheet that accompanies the case (Ivey product #7B07C004). The case is intended as an integrated case across organizational behavior, management science and communication. The organizational behavior teaching approach is included to demonstrate that effective people management is associated with competitive advantages. For management science, the case serves to practice correlation and regression analyses. For communication, the case allows students to prepare a presentation that effectively communicates the complex and comprehensive results of their analyses.