Hy Diaries Ltd

SYNOPSIS

HY Diaries is a large Canadian company that manufactures milk products. The company had been experiencing dwindling sales volumes with one of their products and hired an Assistant Brand Manager – Rochelle Beauport to take charge of the product. Her career seemed promising after her marketing campaign yielded tremendous growth in the sales volume and market share of the product.

To reward her for an exceptional job, the Vice President, Marketing – Syd Gillman offered her a job as a Marketing Research coordinator. A position he held several years ago in the company and had boosted his career in HY. Syd thought the new position would give Rochelle more exposure in marketing and enhance her career in HY, especially as she was one of the few visible minority employees in the marketing management. Rochelle on the other hand, preferred her brand management job which gave her an opportunity to contribute to the company’s bottom-line to this ‘back-office’ position.

Hither to now, Rochelle had experienced gender discrimination in her previous employment. Her boss made it clear that women were incapable of handling the pressures that came with top management positions and relegated them to technical support positions. She had hoped to defy all stereotyping and attain top management in this job but the misconception of Syd’s action left Rochelle feeling side-lined. She thinks Syd does not want a woman and a minority employee to be in top marketing positions. She is in a dilemma of whether to confront Syd over the issue or quit her job.

STEREOTYPING AND SOCIAL IDENTITY

Stereotyping can be described as “the perceptual process of adopting and applying beliefs about the characteristics of identifiable groups” (McShane & Steen, 2011, p.72). It is also an assumption made about a group of people irrespective of their personal characteristics. In this case, Rochelle stereotyped Syd Gillman as a sexist and racist man because she misunderstood his honest intentions...