Playing the Name Game

Background

Crescent Energy, an oil-refining corporation based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for constructing an intranet that will link its headquarters with its three facilities in the United States and Europe. McNeil Informatics, a networking consulting company, is considering responding with a proposal. Most of the work will be performed at Crescent’s headquarters in Riyadh.

Crescent Energy was established 40 years ago by family members related by marriage to the Saudi royal family. At the company headquarters, the support staff and clerical staff include women, most of whom are related to the owners of the company. The professional, managerial, and executive staff are all male, which is traditional in Saudi corporations. Crescent is a large company, with revenues in the billions of dollars.

McNeil Informatics is a small firm (12 employees) established two years ago by Denise McNeil, a 29-year-old computer scientist with a master’s degree in computer engineering. She divides her time between working on her MBA and getting her company off the ground. As a result, the company is struggling financially, and she realizes that it must get the Crescent contract to meet its current financial obligations. Her employees include both men and women at all levels. The chief financial officer is a woman, as are several of the professional staff. The technical writer is a man.

Denise traveled to New York from her headquarters in Pittsburgh to attend a briefing by Crescent. All the representatives from Crescent were middle-aged Saudi men; Denise was the only woman among the representatives of the seven companies that attended the briefing. When Denise shook hands with Mr. Fayed, the team leader, he smiled slightly as he mentioned that he had not realized that McNeil Informatics was run by a woman. Denise did not know what to make of his comment, but she got a strong impression that the Crescent representatives felt uncomfortable in her presence. During the break, they drifted off to speak with the men from the other six vendors, leaving Denise to stand awkwardly by herself.

Once back in her hotel room, Denise was still bothered by the Crescent representatives’ behavior at the meeting. She thought about the possibility of gender discrimination but decided to bid for the project anyway, because she believed that her company could write a persuasive proposal. McNeil Informatics had done several projects of this type in the past year.

She phoned Josh Lipton, the technical writer, to get him started on the proposal. “When you put in the boilerplate about the company, I’d like you to delete the stuff about my founding the company. Don’t say that a woman is the president, okay? And when you assemble the résumés of the project team, I’d like you to use just the first initials, not the first names.”

“I don’t understand, Denise. What’s going on?” Josh asked.

“Well, Crescent looks like an all-male club, very traditional. I’m not sure they would want to hire us if they knew we have a lot of women at the top.”

“You know, Denise, there’s another problem.”

“Which is?”

“I’m thinking of the lead engineer we used in the other networking projects this year.”

“Mark Steinberg,” she said, sighing. “Do you think this will be a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Josh said. “I guess we could use another person. Or kind of change his name on the résumé.”

“Before we commit more resources to this project, we need to find out if Crescent would act prejudicially. We need more information. Do you have any ideas?”

“Let me think about this a little bit. I’ll email you tomorrow morning.”

After hanging up with Josh, Denise decided to phone her mentor, Jane Adams. Denise explained what had happened at the meeting with the Crescent representatives and asked, “If I conceal the gender and ethnicity of my employees and never mention I am the company’s founder, am I condoning the same types of prejudice that led me to start my own company in the first place, or am I just being a practical businesswoman?”

Jane avoided responding immediately to Denise’s question and instead asked for more information: “Besides what happened today, do you have any other evidence that suggests Crescent won’t do business with you if you disclose such information in your proposal?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve asked one of my employees to come up with a research plan. But what if we find out they do business only within the Saudi version of the good-old-boy network?”

“What if you find no signs of anti-women or ethnic prejudices?” Jane countered.

After a long pause, Denise said, “Either way, I’m not sure what to do.”

Your Assignment

[A version of this case first appeared in Ethics in Technical Communication: A Critique and Synthesis (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), by Mike Markel.]