Winning at Litigation through Decision Analysis by John Celona

Author:John Celona
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

13.You represent Duane Hornet, a former software programming manager for the Department of Defense. Duane was fired 4 weeks ago after having worked for the Department for 6 years, three of them as a programming section manager. He came to you claiming that he was the victim of reverse discrimination. After interviewing Duane and investigating on your own, you’ve pieced together the following facts:

Four years ago the Department initiated an internal study on possible discrimination within the programming section after a number of complaints were received. Most of these complaints were from Asian Americans and Asian resident aliens, who contended that they were being unfairly passed over for promotion. Because of the complications of differing security clearance allowances for the resident aliens and because the average tenure of the Asians as a group was less than the average Caucasian tenure, the Department felt a detailed study was necessary to determine if discrimination has indeed taken place.

Two years later, the study reported that there was a significant disparity between the percentages of junior- and management-level Asian programmers that could not be accounted for by differing security access or tenure. Promotions beyond the junior level were made solely by the section managers or section coordinators. The study therefore concluded that race discrimination was the probable cause. The Department then undertook a further study of how to remedy the situation.

The result of that second study was a reorganization plan that eliminated the two lowest existing levels of management: the programming section manager (Duane’s position) and the section coordinator (who Duane reported to). Instead, it established a programming team leader with fewer people reporting to him or her than Duane did. Each team leader would then report to two different team coordinators: one working on the applications development side and the other on the applications support side. Previously, the functions had been mixed. Further, detailed standards were set up for each position and each appointment had to be approved by the reorganization steering committee. In this way, it was felt that two problems could be attacked at the same time: the Department could become more efficient while candidates for the new management positions were appraised on a stricter, “race-free” basis.

However, as the names of the new team leaders and team coordinators began to emerge, Duane saw what seemed to him a disproportionate number of Asians on the list. When his name appeared on a list of team leaders (in effect, a demotion to him—though with no pay cut), he was very upset. Although becoming a team coordinator would have been a promotion, he felt he was more qualified than the other former section manager, Diem Zhu, who became one of his team coordinators. Duane stormed into the office of his former boss, Bill Algol, to complain. Bill was now the next level above the team coordinators, and explained that it was a complicated process and Duane shouldn’t feel slighted by not making team coordinator this round. Duane was unappeased and stated he would not assume a team leader post.

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