Case Study - Equity Theory

When the last student left Mila Khans office at 5:30 p.m., the young Business Professor just sat, too exhausted to move. Her desk was piled high with student papers, journals, and recommendation forms. "There goes my weekend," she thought to herself, knowing that just reading and commenting on the thirty journals would take up all of Saturday. She liked reading the journals, getting a glimpse of how her students were reacting to the novels and poems she had them read, watching them grow and change. But recently, as she picked up another journal from the bottomless pile or greeted another student with a smile, she often wondered whether it was all worth it. Khan had had such a moment about an hour earlier, when Robin Ahmed, whose office was across the hall, had waved to her as he walked past her door. "Im off to the Rat," he announced. "Come join us if you ever get free." For a moment Khan had stared blankly at the student before her, pondering the scene at the Rathskeller, the universitys most popular restaurant and meeting place. Ahmed would be there with four or five of the departments senior members, including Zara Huda, the department chair. All would be glad to have her join them . . . if only she didnt have so much work. At the start of her first year as an assistant professor, Khan had accepted her overwhelming workload as part of the territory. Her paycheck was smaller and her hours longer than she had expected, but Ahmed and the other two new faculty members seemed to be suffering under the same burdens. But now, in her second semester, Khan was beginning to feel that things werent right. The stream of students knocking on her door persisted, but she noticed that Ahmed was spending less time talking and more time at his word processor than he had during the first semester. When asked, Ahmed told her he had reduced his course load because of his extra work on the departments hiring and library committees. He seemed surprised when Khan admitted that she didnt know there was such a thing as a course reduction. As the semester progressed, Khan realized there was a lot she didnt know about the way the department functioned. Ahmed would disappear once a week or so to give talks to groups around the state and then would turn those talks into papers for scholarly journalssomething Khan couldnt dream of having time to do. She and Ahmed were still good friends, but she began to see differences in their approaches. "I cut down my office hours this semester," he told her one day. "With all those students around all the time, I just never had a chance to get my work done." Khan had pondered that statement for a few weeks. She thought that dealing with students was "getting work done." But when salaries for the following year were announced, she realized what Ahmed meant. He would be making almost $1,000 more than she; the human resources committee viewed his committee work as a valuable asset to the department, his talks around the state had already earned him notoriety, and his three upcoming publications clearly put him ahead of the other first-year professors. Khan was confused. Ahmed hadnt done anything sneaky or immoralin fact, everything he did

was admirable, things she would have liked to do. His trips to the Rat gave him the inside scoop on what to do and whom to talk to, but she couldnt blame him for that either. She could have done exactly the same thing. They worked equally hard, she thought. Yet Ahmed already was the highly paid star, whereas she was just another overworked instructor. As she began piling all the books, papers, and journals into her bag, Khan thought about what she could do. She could quit and go somewhere else where she might be more appreciated, but jobs were hard to find and she suspected that the same thing might happen there. She could charge sex discrimination and demand to be paid as much as Ahmed, but that would be unfair to him and she didnt really feel discriminated against for being a woman. The university simply didnt value what she did with her time as highly as it valued what Ahmed did with his. Putting on her coat, Khan spotted a piece of paper that had dropped out of one of the journals. She picked it up and saw it was a note from Wadia Rahman, one of her freshman students. "Professor Khan," it read, "I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to talk to me last week. I really needed to talk to someone experienced about it, and all my other professors are men, and I just couldnt have talked to them. You helped me a whole lot." Sighing, Khan folded the note, put it in her bag, and closed her office door. Suddenly the pile of journals and the $1,000 didnt seem so important.

Please answer the following question:

1. Explain the behavior of Khan and Ahmed using the motivation Equity Theory?

1. Is she satisfied with the way she is being treated? What do you think Mila Khan should do?