Draper Manufacturing is a mattress manufacturer located in Portal, Oregon. The company was recently taken over by Ralph Draper, CEO who replaced his ailing father. The company is facing troubles with the multicultural workforce and other issues with raw materials. Issues in the management are trickling down through the levels of the organization. Ralph has hired a diversity consultant, Ted Hanraha to assist with the tensions that are flaring and the diversity issues that are a burden to all employees in the organization.
The company has 90 fulltime employees and occasionally hires part time employees. The employees are of Asian, Hispanic, and African American cultures. Approximately seventy five percent of the workforce is women. The part time employees that are hired are typically Hispanic American women. The shipping and receiving department is mostly made up of African American men. The human recourses manager, Teresa Burns prefers to employee individuals of Asian descent to work as mechanics and machine operators. Adam Fox is the shipping and receiving manager and is the only African American manager in the organization. Brent Myers, sales manager is pushing the shipping and receiving team to be more productive and efficient of getting the deliveries out to compete with the Asian competitors. Brent has made racial comments about Adam Fox, especially at the latest managers meeting where Ted Hanraha was able to experience the tension that are flaring in the management team.
Draper Manufacturing is also facing challenges with competitors pricing, productivity issues and raw material problems. Asian imports are beginning to impede in the competitive pricing that Draper Manufacturing as once able to provide to customers. The increasing costs of oil and petroleum were also affecting the company’s ability to offer the competitive pricing to their customers. The price of a barrel of oil was over $100 that was