CASE

Manuel was a very capable worker. He was 28 years old and

married. He obtained his bachelor's degree in business

management by attending evening classes. His heritage was

Mexican American. He was born in Detroit USA and had lived

there all his life. He had done an excellent job on every

assignment. He had all the qualifications that Leroy, his boss,

believed a good supervisor should have, including solid

technical expertise. Leroy considered Manuel punctual,

diligent, mature and intelligent. A serious sort of man, Manuel

often came to work early and stayed late. He seemed to spend

most of his free time with his family.

James was a 25-year old high school graduate. He was single

and Leroy knew that he often went hunting or partying with

several of his fellow technicians. Like most of the other men,

James was a WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant). He was

a hard worker and was liked and respected by the others,

including Manuel. On the basis of objective factors, Leroy

believed James ran second to Manuel, although both men had

both good and bad points.

However, there was the race issue. Several times, Leroy heard

fellow workers refer to Manuel as a wetback (a racist term for

Mexicans). Leroy believed some of workers would certainly

prefer to have James as a supervisor, purely because of his

national origin (white American). In fact, he thought one or

two of the men might even resist Manuel's authority to try to

make him look bad. If productivity in the section fell because

of administrative problems, Leroy knew that his own record

with the company might suffer.

At that moment, the phone rang. It was Jack Richards.

"Leroy", he said, "I need to see you. Could you come to my

office in a few minutes?". As Leroy hung up the phone, he

thought, "I know Jack is going to want to talk about my new

replacement".

Question: Given the facts of the case, what decision would

you recommend that Leroy make?

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