UBS Diversity Case
Liz Wilson
Regis University

UBS Diversity Case Gender discrimination is one of the most common forms of Discrimination there is. It used to be that children were taught that the man made the money and the woman was the homemaker. As time has gone on and the economy has changed, people are realizing that old stigmas are no longer considered to be the truth. Women are now being forced to work alongside their husbands and life partners just to make ends meet. Families can no longer survive on one salary. The sad thing in all of this is that while the stigmas have changed, the stereotypes have not. It is still thought that women are less equivalent than their male counterparts. They are not as sought after as males are in organizations. It is still believed that men are better equipped to be doing many of the jobs on the market. There are male saturated fields that employee primarily males. These tend to be the higher paying, more socially accepted careers. There are several industries that a considered to be female appropriate roles including daycares, housekeepers, salon employees, retail, etc. There are more men in executive leadership positions than there are women. According to DeWitt, in 2005 Laura Zubulake was passed over for a management role, and the promotion was awarded to a male named Matthew Chapin (Dewitt, pg. 320).Edgar Schein takes a deep look into the three levels of culture and how they pertain to discrimination. The first level of culture is artifacts. Artifacts are what we know specifically about an organization. Artifacts are the easiest pieced of an organization to decipher. People who do not work in the organization are able to determine a little bit about the companies values simply by observation, although these outsiders might not know specifically why the artifacts they are noticing came to be. At UBS some of the artifacts that are apparent are: more men than women, the organizational structure, business type, and demographic (Dewitt). It is apparent just by setting foot into a branch that there are more men than women. There are clearly managers and non-managers. Managers are generally tending to the day to day operations, while non-managers are focusing on the client in front of them. The type of business is apparent to the naked eye, when walking into a freestanding location. However, it might not be as obvious to a person walking down the street and simply catches the name of the business. The demographic is easily noticed based upon the people inside of the building as well as outside the business. The demographic is also where a majority of the branches pop up. It would appear that they are catering to upper class individuals, since they are financial investment and banking firm The next level if culture is the espoused values. According to BusinessMate.com, this level is a little more difficult to notice. These things are going to be the intangible things, such as the goals and missions of a company. The leaders of a particular company will set forth the espoused values. There needs to be consistency in these values when it comes to how employees will be managed and how the company wants to be ran (BusinessMate.com, 2014). The UBS shows signs of espoused values amid their organization. According to DeWitt, when the upper level managers are asked in court about how the business is ran, they all say the same thing. They all blame Zublake for the issues that arose in the workplace, rather than how the business was ran (Dewitt, 323). Nobody wants to take blame for the allegations. The third and final level of culture is assumptions. According to Harvey and Allard Schein states that the assumptions are how the employees specifically view the culture of their organization. The assumptions are what are considered to be the shared values of a specific organization (Harvey and Allard, 2012). The assumptions are not related to the espoused values and often there is a large disconnect between how a company is portraying their values, and what their actual values are. At UBS it appears that there is a large he said she said argument going on. They say that they promote the best person for the job, yet, females are consistently passed over for jobs. The women in the company feel that they are discriminated against because they are in a market primarily focused upon men. UBS states that they are treated fairly. If UBS would have set in motion with clear definitions with what they were attempting to accomplish, they may have been able to avoid what they are claiming is a miscommunication, or a misunderstanding of the values that the company set forth. In 2010 UBS is ramping up efforts to ensure that their business is culturally diverse. They are recruiting more people from other countries and trying to higher more women, because according to Dewitt “Women are becoming an increasingly powerful and formidable force in owning and managing wealth” (Dewitt 323). However, these changes are coming five years after the case brought against them. It has taken them five years to change their mindset on how they believe their business should be ran. It is tough to say whether or not a simple change in the way UBS communicated with employees would have changed the outcome of Zublake’s time with the organization, as well as her feelings towards the organization. However, there were things that UBS could have done that might have made their female employees feel equal to their male counterparts. Many people argue that women need a network, a support system to talk to when they struggle in the workplace. However, it is not always necessary. Sometimes it is hard for a female to talk to a male about issues she is having in the workplace. Since it has already been established that UBS was a primarily male driven firm, it would not make sense to have a support system for women there. However, many companies are now turning to third party vendors to run their human resources department. It is important to have an onsite human resources department, because they can learn the culture and dynamic of the company. But at the same time this is not always feasible. UBS could have used one of these third party vendors to outsource some of their HR duties. If the female employees they had felt that they needed to voice their concerns to individuals other than their male leadership team they could have reached out to this vendor. They might find it easier to get answers and solutions, especially if there is a legal team on staff at the vendor saying we had an anonymous claim that there is gender discrimination going on in your company. They might have been able to look at the practices of the company and turn it around before it became a larger issue than it needed to be. A mentoring program at any organization is key. By having somebody one employee is able to rely on, makes the individual feel as though they are valued as an employee. According to Rupert Baumgartner, one of the primary ways that an organization is able to guarantee that all employees feel included, and as though they are productive members of the organization and team, is to have a great training program. One piece of any good training program is to make sure that all employees have another employee that they are comfortable talking to and is able to develop them professionally (Baumgartner, 2009). Although UBS didn’t have many female employees and might appear that they didn’t care about the female input set forth by their female employees, they might have found that by pairing the few women they did have on staff with a male made for a successful business. Especially if the male they were paired with took the time to teach their partner, develop them, listened to their input, and learned another different perspective on how to make the business a success.
In 2015, gender discrimination is still an issue. Unfortunately it will most likely always be an issue. Discrimination in general is still a problem. There is no way to rid the world 100% of discrimination, but every year the world can get a little closer. Gender discrimination is a large problem in the world, yet so are all other topics of discrimination. It doesn’t matter what the organization is, they can still apply the artifacts, espoused values, and assumptions levels to their operation. When talking about discrimination, and specifically the UBS case, it is easy to take out women and replace it whatever other non-dominant group the individual chooses. Regardless of the group of people, if they are feeling discriminated against, or left out, or left behind because of their non-dominant features, they are still going to climb the ladder of inference and stop on Edgar Schein’s levels of culture in an organization. Discrimination of all kinds is still prevalent in all societies. However, gender discrimination is always going to be one of the largest problems until people stop looking at women and thinking homemaker. The world has changed and therefore the blind eyes of civilians need to as well.

References
Baumgartner, R. (2009, March 3). Organizational Culture and Leadership: Preconditions for the Development of a Sustainable Corporation. Wiley InterScience, 17, 103-113. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.dml.regis.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=555e02c7-0953-48d9-becc-36105eca5cd8%40sessionmgr4001&vid=16&hid=4209
DeWitt, A. O. (2012). The UBS Diversity Case. 318-327. Retrieved January 20, 2015
Harvey, C. P., & Allard, M. J. (2012). Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases, and exercises (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Retrieved January 3, 2015
Schein, E. H. (2014, April 14). Edgar H. Schein's Model of Organizational Culture. Retrieved January 22, 2015, from BuisnessMate.Org: http://www.businessmate.org/Article.php?ArtikelId=36