Case Study of Hy Dairies

Case study: HY Dairies LTD.

Syd Gilman is the Vice-president of Marketing at HY Dairies, Ltd. Upon reviewing increased sales numbers from the past two quarters and Rochelle Beauport’s contributions to those numbers since taking on the role of assistant brand manager. As a reward for her hard work and performance he planned (what he considered) a promotion for Rochelle to the position of

market research coordinator. Syd considered this a promotion. Based on his mostly unknown history with the company, this position had proven to be valuable experience and helped him to round out his own marketing skill-set. Rochelle, however, has had a negative experience with her previous employer where her ethnicity and gender had become roadblocks to success, Her former boss had stated that women “Can’t take the heat” in marketing. According to Rochelle, the Women she had seen in her position before were relegated to what were in her words, a “Backroom” job. Due to her past biases she views this new position as not relevant to attaining her career goals and mostly as a polite way for her new management to avoid putting her in a position of power breaking through upper level management. In this case, Rochelle and Syd are both guilty of a lack of communication. Although she didn’t feel comfortable about voicing her concerns with the decision or about her past experiences she still accepted the position, While

Syd was oblivious about her reservations in taking the promotion.

If we look at the process of stereotyping as “the process of assigning traits to people based on their membership in a social category”; and social identity theory as “How people define themselves by the groups to which they belong or have an emotional attachment” we can see that based on her own negative experiences surrounding “non-whites” and women being viewed as inferior or unfit for management, Rochelle’s view on office politics has been impacted. Our past experiences form our future views. To have been pushed in this exact employment role before because “women can’t handle the heat” has created a negative bias to the job itself because she is emotionally beholden to this memory.

The case study itself states that not many people know Syd’s previous experience in the marketing coordinator role and also that “She did not know her boss well enough to be openly critical” indicate stereotyping. In her mind she sees no difference between her racists sexist former