A Case Study on “Managing Like a Man at Silkqueen?”
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This is the case study on “Managing like a man at SilkQueen?” by Kate Hutchings of Queensland University of Technology. Here we are given a character named Sally Dawson who works for SilkQueen, which is an Australian company. She is a well skilled manager who has a huge experience for working successfully in Asia.
However, working in this company as a manager, she facing some problems, which lead her to take a decision whether she leaves the company or try to make some smart changes.
For this case study, we are using four questions. We answer all the four questions one by one respectively. In those, we try to figure out the problems faced by the employees and Sally, attitudes of the organization towards Sally, ways…show more content… She does not ask what the employees think before she implements anything. The employees therefore perceive Sally to be a poor manager who does not care about employees’ work condition and who buries herself ‘behind a high desk with her back to the door in an office two levels above’.
These perceptions however may not be true. According to organizational behavior scholars, ‘women are evaluated negatively when they adopt a stereotypically male leadership style and occupy traditionally male-dominated positions’. The employees in the case assume that Sally being a woman should be ‘nurturing and … care about their workers’ suggesting preconceived notions of how women should behave. This notion of stereotyping can result in misinterpretation of information because not all people are the same, and many in the same social category may demonstrate inconsistencies with the stereotype.
Question Two: What are the problems faced by Sally and what could the organization have done to address her problems?
The first action by Sally in making a decision to change the work hours without consultation with the employees formed a lasting impression of her leadership, known as the primary effect the primary effect relates to a perceptual distortion which states that ‘first impressions are lasting impressions’ and once an inaccurate first impression is established, it is difficult for the perception to change even when