Anne is an established electrical engineer at Onerous, a computer hardware company. Not a stranger to incidences of favoritism the company, Anne recently encountered a particularly unfavorable scenario involving a few of her close co-workers.
Two employees, who had been newly hired, were given visible roles in a prominent project. Upon the project鈥檚 successful completion, the new-hires were given generous promotions by management. On the other hand, Anne鈥檚 co-workers were asked to play supporting roles in the project, and were not given any special recognition (i.e., promotions) for their work.
Anne鈥檚 non-confrontational co-workers were angry and came to Anne for advice since they knew she had broad professional experience. They told her that they were going to leave the company if management did not stop playing favorites.
Although strongly inclined to bring this matter up to her manager, Anne felt like doing so would be futile because her manager is stubborn and inflexible. How should Anne deal with this situation?
Jocelyn Tan was a 2014-2015 Hackworth Fellow in Engineering Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at 糖心传媒.
August 2015