Gender Inequality in Dell - Assignment Example

Gender Inequality in Dell Affiliation Introduction This paper revolves around the issue of gender inequality in Dell, which is depicted in the company through two major. The first way through which gender inequality is depicted in the company is through its recruiting processes whereby females are left out in the company’s management ranks. The other ways in which gender inequality is sown is through its advertising technological processes. In this case, the choice of words makes the advertising messages appear to focus on male customers only. While females are the more singled out of the two genders, the truth remains that women account for the largest number of the company’s products and services, yet, they are singled out in all attempts of enhancing the company. According to the World Bank (2011), the company discriminates against women who have been found to won most of the company’s business in the sense that they are the major customers of its products and services. Global Overview of the Issue The chosen technology would be strategy-based in that it would focus on the best strategy to make the company adjust from the issue of gender inequality to gender balance in all its activities. The case of gender equality has already been a major consideration by most of the organizations around the world (McCarthy, 2013). The fight against gender disparities among global communities and more specifically, the fight against women discrimination have promoted this aspect. The process of ensuring that women are in the leadership positions has remained a hot topic, as depicted in this case, but a technology for monitoring the course of promoting gender equality in Dell Inc. could save the company’s negative image as far as gender discrimination is concerned (Vehviläinen, Vuolanto, & Ylijoki, 2010). According to McCarthy (2013), the message of encouraging gender equality is seemingly working since the number of women being appointed and recruited into the top management ranks in organizations is increasing. Nevertheless, the rate of achieving a gender balance was at one time increasing, but the trend has changed significantly (McCarthy, 2013). This trend signors that organizations need to do something about its strategies that focused on ensuring gender equality within organizations. It seems that the pressures that were at one point imposed by clubs, associations, and campaigns do not play a key role in ensuring gender balance in organizations management and activities today. The need for internal actions within organization is driven by this fact. While the efforts imposed to ensure gender balance remain to be a major organizational and global focus, it follows that not every individual wishes to be within a senior position, and more importantly, most women do not initiate the required efforts to fight for the top position with their fellow male workers. This case makes the achievement of gender equality difficult, unless organizations impose regulations that support a predefined ration for males to females in a management position (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001). Nevertheless, McCarthy asserts, “not everyone in a company can be on a board. Not everyone wants to be in a senior management role. More pressingly, many more women are involved in businesses as stakeholders.” From this scenario, it may be ascertained that women are to blame for their misfortunes regarding the issue of being singled out. Company Background Dell is a privately owned organization that deals in computers and computer related products/services. The company is a multinational computer manufacturing company that is privately owned and based in Texas, US. The company develops, repairs, sells, and supports computers among other related services and products. The company is among the largest technology companies in the world. In the year 2007, the company recruited fresh and talented personnel in it top managerial positions. The major problem regarding this recruiting process is that among all people recruited in the company’s management ranks, there were no females. Besides, the issue of gender inequality is further pronounced through its ads, which use male dominated terms to depict the core motive of the company. The use of the word ‘dude’ sounds male and an indication of female negation, which is an addition case of gender inequality. The use of made dominate words that focuses on customers lean on the male gender. A solution to this issue is to come up with an advertising technology process that would incorporate gender equality in the company’s advertising and recruiting processes. Description and Analysis of the Options Regarding gender inequality and the efforts in place towards elimination of this issue, the case of Dell is unusual since the company’s recruiting process discriminated against women and the advertising strategies seem to focus on male customers. This strategy could be depicted as good and important since the company has to focus on the best way of attracting both males and females into its business. Now, women are found to take a larger part of Dell’s business than males. Using advertising ads that focus on males would be a way of pulling more males into the company’s business. Regarding the recruiting process, women need to be made part of the company’s management ranks. This objective could be achieved by recruiting more women than ever before, focusing on qualification instead of genders traits among recruits, and using a technological process that ensures a given number of female recruits are chosen even if they possess fewer qualifications than their fellow males (U.S. Agency for International Development, 2014). Ultimate Option A technological process that ensures that a close to equal number of male and female recruits join the company’s top management workforce would definitely be a great idea. Besides, the same technology should be used to ensure that both male and female consumers are targeted in an equal way. If possible, the use of male words to represents customers should be avoided. It is the work of the adopted technological process to ensure that the strategy achieves the aim of minimizing gender inequality by seeing that the number of female customers has increased. Pros Essentially, the technological process is meant to reduce gender inequality in Dell especially ensuring the increase of the women involvement as the disadvantaged gender not only in the organization but also in other organizations around the world. A close monitoring of the recruitment processes within the company would ensure that women are not singled out simply because of their female gender, but only if they are not qualified enough for the management positions. The technological process would ensure that the recruiting process is fair and that the organization can benefit by absorbing the best leadership talents from workers irrespective of their gender differences or even sexual orientations. The new system also would ensure fairness in all the processes aimed at motivating workers. Cons The major problem of adopting this new technology that encourages more females in all the company’s advertising processes is that more women than men would be attracted to the business thereby creating an addition problem of gender inequality as far as Dell’s business is concerned. Currently, according to the World Bank (2013), women comprise the most part of the company’s business although they seem to be singled out through the company’s advertisement ads. While the technology is to focus of encouraging the focus on women as the most disadvantaged group as far as gender inequality is concerned, it may not be applicable in this case. The ads may use the word ‘dude’ in order to pull more males into the company’s business in order to level the number of women involved in the company’s business. Again, implementing the new technological process that would ensure that the company achieves gender equality in all its operations would be an additional cost to the organization. The program Success in Solving the Gender Inequality Issue Generating meaningful solutions to the gender inequality issue in Dell would require much commitment and adjustments. The company needs to consider the similar course of actions initiated by other companies such as the HP Company. The first course of action could be to appoint a female CEO or several women in the company’s top ranked management personnel according to Daft (2007). This action is likely to yield an excellent image regarding the company’s managements especially given that women have been given a chance to the management level. On another aspect, the company could decide to appoint a significant percentage of women to be among its executives. Essentially, appointing at least a third of women in the executive committee of the company would be a great idea towards a solution to the elimination of gender inequality in Dell. Typically, women may lose work moral and remain less productive due to the position they are placed not only in the society but also in organizations. A move towards the appointing of women especially with respect to some qualifications would definitely encourage other women within the organization to work towards higher productivity (VEHVILÄINEN, 2007). Appointing a given team of women based on their performance records would thus pull more women to the same management position by portraying their abilities through improved productivity. Regarding the company’s advertisement efforts, the use of ads that focus solely on male customers should cease to be practiced. In essence, Dell needs to come up with ads that focus on achieving gender equality in the company’s advertisement efforts. Project Budget and Timeline Initiation of changes on Dell’s technical process with a view of achieving gender equality would incur some costs to the organization. With regard to the changes involved, there need to be an estimate of staffing, timeline estimates, and well as budgeting (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001). It is presumed that changes in the timeline will lead to a budget increase especially during the initial three months specifically for the processes of recruitment and training131. The budget increase is estimated to be by $6.79 million. This means that the project budget is as shown in the table below. Technical Process Change Estimated Budget Allocation ($) Identifying Vacancies and evaluating needs 750,000 Developing position Description 600,000 Developing the recruiting plan 400,000 Selecting the search committee 700,000 Posting position and implementation of the recruitment plan 100,000 Reviewing the applicants 200,000 Conducting the interview 800,000 Hiring based on qualification 300,000 Finalizing the recruitment 800,000 Making adjustment on the advertising strategy to ensure gender equality 2,140,000 Total 6,790,000 The budget allocation in this case is based on the estimated budget increase given the initiation of changes in both the recruiting process and the advertising strategies. Importantly, the project on changing Dell’s technical process has to be initiated through a given timeframe. This means that a timetable has to be set in order to structure the time estimates for all activities. The timeframe estimates for every activity is presented in table 2 below. Table 2: Timeframe for every activity based on estimates Technical Process Change Activities Estimated time (days) Identifying Vacancies and evaluating needs 14 Developing position Description 2 Developing the recruiting plan 7 Selecting the search committee 3 Posting position and implementation of the recruitment plan 7 Reviewing the applicants 14 Conducting the interview 7 Hiring based on qualification 2 Finalizing the recruitment 3 Making adjustment on the advertising strategy to ensure gender equality 14 Total time 73 The time would vary depending on the activities initiated. Some activities would take much more time than others would, but the budget allocation could be on contrary less than the respective comparisons. Conclusion In essence, the malpractices seen in Dell Inc. have largely contributed to a negative image for the company. The existing system does not provide a balanced consideration for both men and women in all its activities. This major technical issue requires immediate correction. Right from the recruiting processes, its management activities/jobs, to the advertising strategies, women are largely left out. This failure comes in irrespective of the fact that women, just like men, have excellent leadership and management skills, which can enhance the company’s progress. According to the World Bank (2011), women can make great customers even if an organization like Dell does not recognize them in its advertising strategies. This calls for the needs of the organization to initiate the necessary adjustments in both its recruitment and advertising processes among other processes. The organization needs to come up with a technology that monitors the aspect of gender equality in all the company’s processes and departments (Vehviläinen, Vuolanto, & Ylijoki, 2010). The key processes of focus here are the recruiting process and the advertising processes. The recruiting process dictates the structure of employees working in the company while the advertising process determines the targeted audiences with respect to the advertisement message passed across. Given the both the budget and time estimates for the activities required in initiating the changes, the company can minimize the issue of gender inequality significantly. References Daft, R. L., & Daft, R. L. (2007). New era of management. Mason, Ohio: Thomson Southwestern. McCarthy, L. (2013, August 05). Focus on gender equality should span beyond leadership positions: The beauty of the sustainability sector is that it recognises gender issues arent confined to within office walls. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/gender-equality-beyond-leadership-positions McDermott, R., & O’Dell, C. (2001). Overcoming cultural barriers to sharing knowledge. Journal of knowledge management, 5(1), 76-85. U.S. Agency for International Development. (2014, May 13). Gender Equality and Womens Empowerment. Retrieved from USAID: http://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment VEHVILÄINEN, M. B. (2007). Cartography of gender equality projects: Liberal equality from the perspective of situated equality. Information Communication and Society, 10(3), 384-403. Vehviläinen, M., Vuolanto, P., & Ylijoki, O.-H. (2010). Gender Equality in Interface Organizations between Science, Technology and Innovation. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, 5(1). World Bank. (2011). Gender equality and development. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications. Read More