Abstract

The case is about one of the world’s leading pharmaceuticals company Eli Lilly & Company (Lilly). Lilly, which claims to have a very good diversity program running at the company and was also widely regarded as a very good employer, faced a federal lawsuit that raised some serious questions regarding the company’s human rights policies and practices. In April 2006, three former employees and one employee who was still working at Lilly then filed a case against the company alleging that the company discriminated against its African American employees on racial grounds. The lawsuit claimed that the African American employees working at Lilly experienced disparity in wages, promotions, performance evaluations and discipline. By the end of 2007, more than a hundred former and present employees of Lilly joined forces with the plaintiffs against the company. Lilly had, however, denied the allegations saying that discrimination against any individual or group was inconsistent with their long-held core values and employment philosophy. On the other hand, a section of the employees at Lilly felt that in order to promote diversity the company was going out of its way in hiring, grooming and promoting under-qualified minority employees at the cost of organizational effectiveness.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the issues and challenges in promoting and managing workplace diversity. Understand the issue of discrimination at the workplace. Understand the communication challenges faced by companies in a multi-cultural workplace. Understand the corporate

Keywords

Workplace diversity, Diversity strategy, Discrimination , Workplace discrimination, Equal Employment opportunity, Diversity training, HR policy, Core values, Employment philosophy, Corporate communications, Ethics, Code of business conduct, Corporate citizenship, Training and Development, Multicultural, Employee benefits, Eli Lilly, Pharmaceutical