Case Scenerio - Analysis

 Week 2 - Case Analysis/Scenario

Sandra Peppers

Human Resource Management – MGT3045

January 26, 2014

Professor Dana Jaax

South University Online

Introduction

        Mary worked for Bob for two years. Bob asked Mary out to dinner, about 6 six ago. The two seem to have a few things and common and continued dating. After about 2 months, Bob was beginning to be annoying in a way that Mary wanted to stop seeing him personally. They did continue to work together, but things at work became increasingly hard. Bob had told Mary that she would be sorry for ending their relationship, so he began to evaluate Mary’s job perform as being poor, so much so that his bosses began to notice. Mary took her complaint to the company’s Human Resource department.

Analysis

        Under the circumstances, Mary was right in taking her complaint to the Human Resource department. Mary felt as if she was being sexual harassed for the fact that she did not want to see Bob, outside of work, any longer. According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances (Facts About Sexual Harrassment, 1964):

• The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, co-worker, or even a non-employee
• The harasser’s conduct must be unwelcome.
• The victim, or harasser, can be male or female
• The victim does not have to be the one actually being harassed, but someone affected by the offensive conduct.

Given these few circumstances, it is shown that Mary was being sexually harassed, that resulted in a hostile work environment while in the workplace, by Bob. Bob was Mary’s supervisor and because she refused to see him personally, he began to retaliate by granting poor performance reviews for Mary. These performance reviews were noticed by supervisors, above Bob, and this worried Mary. The workplace was becoming a very hostile environment, for Mary, and she feared that she would be fired. There is a thin line between quid pro quo and ‘hostile environment’. In this case, both apply. Mary was in danger of being fired, because of negative evaluations that Bob was giving her because of her refusal to see him personally any longer. “Hostile environment” harassment acquired the characteristics of ‘quid pro quo’ harassment when he tried used his authority (the negative evaluations) to coerce Mary into a relationship (Enforcement Guidance, 2010).