SOCIAL DIVERSITY IN THE MOVIE,"WORKING GIRL"

Social Diversity in the Film Working Girl

            Working girl narrates a story about a New York City secretary, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), and her struggles to maneuver through and succeed in a big business venture. After her boss breaks her legs while she was on vacation, Tess goes to work for another investment. There she meets Jack trainer (Harrison Ford). She struggles with her professional shortcomings and the issues relating to her personal life after she discovered that her boyfriend was cheating on her and she was gradually falling in love with Jack.

            In an organizational set up, many factors play a role in determining its level of development. For example, the interorganisational as well as intraorganisational ties. Mentoring of the juniors by the senior members of any organization is one of the key issues that assist any organization to develop through imparting skills and experience to the juniors. However, the mentorship process should not only be emphasized to emanate from the seniors to the juniors of the same organization but should also come from outside agencies to ensure that an individual acquires holistic experience.

            The case of Tess McGill presents a compromised exposure to the infinite world of endless possibilities. All she gets from her relationships with her colleagues is more of harassment to her career than a benefit. For instance, Kevin Spacey treats her as a prostitute. From the insightful perspective offered by Higgins and Kram, Tess seems to have fallen in hands of Sponsors rather than true mentors. Though there was, a lot of career support that was met on her, her bosses neglected the psychosocial mentorship that Tess required. Lack of this integrated mentorship process culminated into her falling into series of troubles which could hitherto be avoided could she have been holistically mentored. Tess McGill mentors ought to train her beyond the working programme. For her to succeed, she needed to balance the effects of her work experience as well the psychosocial factors such as friendship, counseling, confirmation, and acceptance (Higgins & Kram,2001). 

            A great mistake that was made by her mentor and owner of the executive business, Kathryn was that she heavily relied on her ideas. Furthermore, she made them one of her own. Kathryn is always impressed by the ideas that Tess had to a point that she was completely satisfied with her. Basing on the idea held by Higgins and Kram, this was a big compromise that would consequently affect the performance of any organization or firm. Hardly did she realize that consulting from outside agencies would assist Tess to be more exposed and experienced especially in highly competitive environments. This would assist organizations or firms to collect data regarding their competitors and help them to evaluate theirs in an attempt to improve on their performance. Diverse interaction would consequently help her to gather ideas that would be useful in ensuring that the business thrives (Higgins & Kram, 2001).

            There was also lack of flexibility that would allow her gather ideas that would be useful to develop her input in the business. After Kathryn tells her that she is an excellent decision maker, she resolves to follow her own course in assisting the growth of the business. This was indeed a misinformed point of view since she could have heavily got a lot of advice from diverse sources to assist her to be more informed. Kathrin’s biggest mistake was that she already set the ball rolling for her business proposition. Hardly did Kathryn realize that sometimes the mentorship meted on the juniors might at times become complicated especially when they are used to one mentor, the boss, due to the changing nature of the duties. There are times when the boss needs to change his/her duties and this will adversely affect his/her juniors if they are not trained to seek mentorship from external agencies. Her lack of exposure makes her to be put at risk when Kathryn uses her own ideas to pull Trask and Jack at the expense of Tess. This would work to compromise Tess’s position.

            Tess could be advised to strengthen some developmental networks to support her career. Firstly is the opportunistic development network. In this view, she should be ready and willing to receive advice from outside agencies to cater for her holistic development of her career. Secondly, she should strengthen her entrepreneurial development network. This will allow her to access diversified information from different sources that will allow her to be equipped in running of business activities (Higgins & Kram, 2001).

References

Higgins, M.C. & Kram, E.K. (2001). Re-conceptualizing mentoring at work: Developmental                                  network perspective. Academy of management Review200, Vol 26, 2: 264-298.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMKDouP2xeI