AEI Systems was founded by Ken Marks with his brother in law, John Hammond, in the early 1980s. Ken had worked as inventory manager for a sporting goods company and he and John bought the rights to the software that was used to control the inventory. Ken hired one of Hammond's sisters (Ken was married to another of Hammond's sisters) as bookkeeper, and Ken's second eldest daughter was brought in as receptionist. Recruiting at local colleges, Ken hired two programmers to expand the software based on his specifications. After six months, Ken's oldest son, Mike, was brought in to help John with marketing activities. The company did well and expanded into wholesale distribution. More programmers were brought on board; these were young men hired from local colleges. By the early 1990s, the company had approximately 50 employees, including project managers, programmers, technical writers, a small accounting staff, and a marketing department consisting of five outside and one inside sales professional. In addition to Ken's family members, there are a large number of Mormons within the company (Ken is himself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
It is recommended that AEI implement a formal diversity plan with the goal of increasing the awareness of current employees regarding the diversity of their colleagues. In addition, the diversity plan will seek to actively recruit, train and promote employees with diverse backgrounds.
Managers can no longer ignore the fact that the nation's workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. Affirmative action programs are no longer enough to deal with this increased diversity; instead, companies are taking a more far-sighted approach that includes setting up departments to assist employees in handling complaints and personal insults from customers, and to setting up workplace environments that foster harmonious relationships among all employees (Prewitt, 1994, p. 66).<...