More from the Author

• Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2018

  Gender and Free Speech at Google

  Nien-hê Hsieh, Martha J. Crawford and Sarah Mehta

  In August 2017, Google fired James Damore, a 28-year-old software engineer who had been employed by the company since 2013. The move came after Damore penned an internal company memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” which posited that innate biological differences between men and women—as opposed to hiring biases, gender discrimination, or a hostile workforce—were at least partially responsible for the low numbers of women in tech. At the time, 20% of Google’s tech workforce, and 31% of its overall staff, was female. Damore also admonished Google for silencing opinions that challenged what he viewed as the company’s politically liberal belief system.
  
  Reactions to both the memo’s content and Google’s decision to fire Damore were swift and varied. Some praised the company for signaling intolerance of any marginalization of women. Others criticized Google for terminating an employee for a seemingly innocuous act of expression. Danielle Brown, Google’s new vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, hired just a few weeks before the memo was leaked to the public, must now advise Google’s top leadership team on dealing with the fallout.

  Keywords: gender; Free Speech; diversity; Representation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Labor; Employment; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry; United States; California;

  Citation:

  Hsieh, Nien-hê, Martha J. Crawford, and Sarah Mehta. "Gender and Free Speech at Google." Harvard Business School Case 318-085, March 2018.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsEducators

  Related

• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | March 2018

  Governance and Sustainability at Nike (A) and (B)

  Nien-hê Hsieh

  Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 313-146 and 313-147.

  Citation:

  Hsieh, Nien-hê. "Governance and Sustainability at Nike (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 318-126, March 2018.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsPurchase

  Related

• Module Note | March 2018

  Module Note for Instructors: Responsibilities to Society

  Nien-hê Hsieh

  This note outlines a framework to help managers discern and deliver on their responsibilities to society that has been taught in the “Responsibilities to Society” module in Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA), a semester-long, first-year required course for MBAs at Harvard Business School. The module outlined in this note also can be used as the basis for a short standalone course on the role and responsibilities of business in society. The framework developed in this module centers on managing harms to third parties—i.e., parties with whom companies do not transact commercially or have direct contractual relations. The framework aims to ground the responsibilities of managers in an intuitively plausible standard that is widely recognized—duty not to harm others—and to make tractable the concept of society, which is often seen as amorphous and vaguely defined. The framework aids managers in 1) identifying relevant harms, 2) determining the responsibility for them, 3) developing appropriate responses, and 4) recognizing political limits on what companies ought to do.

  Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Leadership; Society;

  Citation:

  Hsieh, Nien-hê. "Module Note for Instructors: Responsibilities to Society." Harvard Business School Module Note 318-125, March 2018.  View Details

  CiteView DetailsPurchase

  Related