5DB Managing High Performance

You are a supervisor in a factory in downtown Brooklyn, a current day melting pot of numerous ethnic, religious, and racial groups. Your department has 2 devout Muslims, a person of Jewish descent, 5 African-Americans, 3 Hispanics, and 5 Caucasian employees. In recent months, tensions have been mounting in the department because of a variety of differences in opinions and values among the workforce. Although departmental output has met the scheduled work, it has done so just barely, and you are convinced your department could do much better. Your boss has indicated that unless the overall plant efficiency improves significantly, he cannot guarantee that some of the factory’s work will not be outsourced to a factory in another state or country where the workforce is more homogenous and has less employee tensions.

You plan to meet with your department tomorrow and discuss all this.