Augusta National Golf Club Controversy (A)

The secret membership of the prestigious Augusta National Golf Club is widely believed to exclude women. When feminist lawyer Martha Burk receives a mysterious list of “members”, she has to decide how best to use this information to break the glass ceiling. Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) takes on Hootie Johnson …

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Black Caucus Groups at Xerox Corp. (A)

In 1970, Xerox had a very advanced affirmative action program, but once hired, black employees faced serious problems, both due to outright discrimination and their exclusion from the informal support, information, and mentoring networks shared by other vendors. . Black workers responded by establishing seven independent advocacy groups in the United States. These black factions …

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Red Hat Canada: Bridging the Gender Gap

In August 2017, the Canadian leader of Red Hat Inc., an open source software company, reviewed the progress made by the Canadian subsidiary of the American multinational in closing the gender gap. The subsidiary had achieved its goal of increasing the proportion of women on the sales team from 5 percent in August 2014 to …

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Differences at Work: Erica (B)

In Differences at Work: Erica (B) HBS Case no. 9408048, Erica discovers that both she and her client are African American. She wonders why they invited her to dinner.

Uber: #WhatDoYouDo?

This publicly available case is based on a 2017 blog post by a former Uber employee, Susan Fowler, in which she was brutally honest about sexual harassment, sexism, sibling culture, and the failures of human resources and senior management of the ridesharing department. All the thoughts and conversations between the characters in this case are …

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Ellen Moore (B)

It features an edited transcript of the questions students asked Ellen Moore while attending class. Describe the decision Ellen Moore made and further describe her experiences and her views on women in leadership positions.

Democracy, Sovereignty, and the Struggle over Cherokee Removal

For years in the mid-1830s, the United States government and the state of Georgia had urged the Cherokees to hand over their entire territory to white settlers and move west, but it seemed that most Cherokee wanted preserve their ancestral homes. In October 1835, the Cherokee General Council appointed a committee of leaders to find …

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Bank of London

The Bank of London vice president was surprised to hear that the employees union filed a complaint about gender discrimination in starting wages. The Vice President believed that the Bank of London was actively promoting diversity and inclusion as a natural part of its culture; In addition, the leadership team understood the importance of diversity …

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Differences at Work: Emily (C)

In Differences at Work: Emily (C) HBS Case no. 9408047 describes how the author of the original email apologized to her and acknowledged that her behavior was extremely inappropriate. Although Emily accepts her apology, she still forwards the email to her boss, with a hint that after reading the email she felt that she couldn’t …

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