What are the principal causative factors of the problems? Were they reasonably foreseeable? Who or which groups are responsible, what was their role?

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MGMT 601: Leadership in the Global Context

Final Case Study
This assignment will allow you to demonstrate your analytic and critical abilities, both of which are essential components of leadership. A case study is not mealy descriptive, it is an in–depth self contained critical analysis of an actual problem involving actual clients or subjects.

Here are some of the aspects you might consider inserting into your analysis:
• What are the principal causative factors of the problems?
• Were they reasonably foreseeable?
• Who or which groups are responsible, what was their role?
• Were there any marginalized or discounted groups or perspectives?
• How do the facts affect the client, subjects or victims of your case study?
• Are there leadership or ethical gaps, what leadership styles prevailed throughout?
• What is the best possible outcome, what are your recommendations?
• Are there any inter–disciplinary (eg. legal, regulatory, HR, media …) considerations?

Evaluate current business operations in one segment of the enterprise to identify performance gaps relative to cost, production, and delivery of products or services.

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7-1 Final Project Milestone Three: Business Operations Opportunities Analysis

Prompt: To finalize this analysis, you will need to gather information about managing inventory, resource planning, and scheduling. Information can generally be found on the organization’s main website, in the annual report and mission statement, and in articles authored by the company or outside analysts, such as ThomasNet.com, buy/sell sites (e.g., Jim Cramer), and investment companies (e.g., Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, or Vanguard). As operations management students and professionals, you are encouraged to use your own experience, understanding, and knowledge of business and industry structure to drive your analysis. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

IV. Technology for Competitive Differentiation

  • A. Evaluate current business operations in one segment of the enterprise to identify performance gaps relative to cost, production, and delivery of products or services.
  • B. Based on the performance gaps you identified, describe specific opportunities that would benefit from technology enhancement or technical solutions. Ensure that your response focuses on using technology to reduce costs, increase production, and deliver consistently superior products or services.
  • C. How can the technology you described be utilized to mitigate the performance gap? Ensure that your response focuses on using technology to reduce costs, increase production, and deliver consistently superior products or services.

Provide a list of human resources required for the project. Identify the specific skill set needed. Describe the roles and key responsibilities for each job type.

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7-1 Final Project Milestone Three: Resource Management Plan

Prompt: Thus far in the course, you have completed a case study overview, a project charter, and a project scope statement. You have also set up your project using MS Project software. In this milestone, you will develop a resource management plan and update your project with this material using MS Project software. An Excel spreadsheet template has been provided for your use in creating a resource management plan. If you prefer a different format, you are free to use the format you prefer.

You will determine what your resource management plan will need, but at a minimum it should include the following critical elements:
I. Provide a list of human resources required for the project.
II. Identify the specific skill set needed.
III. Describe the roles and key responsibilities for each job type.
IV. Provide a list of equipment items to be used.
V. Identify the purpose of each equipment item.
VI. Identify the types and quantities of equipment needed.
VII. Provide a list of materials needed.
VIII. Identify people or resource constraints (dates of availability).
IX. Identify the specific planning dates when resources are needed.

How did your character develop their management traits? Identify three management traits that the leader possesses, and explain why they are necessary to a successful manager. How you can develop each skill or trait in your own life?

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Management Question

For your paper, you will create a fictional character for a movie. The character should be in a management position. Your paper should utilize appropriate course material (and from your own research).

Ensure you address the following topics in your paper:

  • Describe the personality of your character (this is to help the reader understand the challenges your leader faces).
  • How did your character develop their management traits?
  • Identify three management traits that the leader possesses, and explain why they are necessary to a successful manager.
  • How you can develop each skill or trait in your own life? Training, education, experience, etc. – but be specific (if you create goals they should be SMART).
  • What are the possible disadvantages of having these traits?
  • How have you seen the selected traits utilized effectively in your own experiences in life?
  • How can you market the traits (for this I would like to see resume bullets for each of the traits)? – Put yourself in your character's shoes, as if they were writing a resume.
  • How do you relate to your character? Could you be managed by him/her/it?

Do you agree with Global Tech’s vision? Why or why not? Based on what you think might be an appropriate vision for the company, come up with a good mission statement for Global Tech, and explain why it is a good mission statement.

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Case analysis and short answer

Part A: Short-Answer Questions (6 questions)

1) The United States is, by many accounts, facing an opioid crisis. Among various hypotheses that have been advanced for this phenomenon, one hypothesis is that increased pharmaceutical advertising on television causes increased substance dependency. Evaluate the main pros and cons of using each of the following four research instruments to collect data that will allow for testing this hypothesis: survey questionnaires, qualitative methods, eye-tracking, and neuro-methods. Which would you recommend using and why?

3) View the following advertisements for Dove Men+Care: Advertisement 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAW7iWhjJbU) and Advertisement 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJDIDKQIMNI). Write down two appropriate positioning statements for Dove Men+Care, one based on each advertisement. Evaluate the evolution in Dove Men+Care’s positioning from Advertisement 1 to Advertisement2.  Explain whether you think this evolution was a good decision, and why.

4) Consider any brand that you are extremely loyal to. Specific to this brand, use the Brand Resonance Model to explain how the various brand building blocks have resulted in evolving levels of brand equity for you as a consumer over time. (2 points)

5) A hoverboard is a levitating board similar in shape and size to a skateboard; it is typically used for personal transportation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverboard). Although long considered fictional, there have been increasing recent attempts to create real hoverboards. Explain how the various characteristics of hoverboards as an innovation are likely to influence their rate of adoption among the general populace. (2 points)

6) According to USA Today’s Ad Meter, “Forever” from The Farmer’s Dog was the highest-rated Super Bowl LVII commercial (you can view the commercial at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAIo-pUDl0sLinks to an external site.). What are the commercial’s likely IMC objectives, and why do you think so? Of Cialdini’s principles, which ones does the commercial use? Explain how the commercial’s use of these principles might influence consumers and help the company meet its objectives for the commercial.

 

7) Warby Parker is a retailer of eyeglasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses. Founded in 2010 as a completely online company, Warby Parker was able to manufacture its own eyewear and leverage its direct channel structure to sell prescription eyeglasses at $95, compared to the $200 or higher charged by major eyeglass retailers. Additionally, for each pair of eyeglasses that Warby Parker sells, the company donates a pair of eyeglasses to non-profit organizations that distribute the eyeglasses among the one billion people worldwide who otherwise lack access to eyeglasses. Based on this information, explain the various ways in which Warby Parker’s holistic marketing approach enables its channel strategy, pricing, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to support each other.

 

 

Part B: Case Analysis (4 questions)

Use the following case based on a real company to answer the questions in this part:

Global Tech LLC (Global Tech) is a privately-owned information technology (IT) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) services company that was founded in 1999, with headquarters in “Silicon Valley,” California. In 1999, the company also started operations in Hyderabad, India, and its business model was simple. The US operations would generate business from US clients, and the Indian operations would fulfill the business by providing IT and BPO services. The company’s vision was “To be the best IT and BPO services company in the world.”

1999 was a “boom” time for the IT industry, especially companies with Indian operations, who were able to leverage cost advantages to “patch” older software for Y2K compliance. To aid business development, Global Tech quickly hired 10 salespeople in the US, and this helped the company reach $101M annual revenue within five years. Although the company is tight-lipped about current revenue and profit, analysts estimate that revenue had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5% from 2004 till today. The company has also grown from around 1,000 employees in 2004 to 5,021 employees today, most employed in India, but also including 51 US-based salespeople. Global Tech’s competitive strategy was and still is driven to a large extent by cost differentiation, using hourly billing rates as low as $15 to acquire new clients, and then providing satisfactory services to secure repeat business at similarly low billing rates, resulting in gross margins of less than 35% as opposed to the 40% to 45% margins made by other companies in the same industry.

A simplified value chain of the IT industry suggests that companies at the high end engage in differentiated activities that are more proprietary and less imitable, allowing them to appropriate more value. These include firms such as Google, SAP, and Microsoft, who engage in R&D services to develop their own products and services. IT consulting companies such as IBM and Accenture engage clients to understand business and functional requirements that can be fulfilled by products or services from companies such as Google and SAP. IT consulting companies then pass this information on to their IT services SBUs or other IT services providers. IT services providers work on these requirements to develop, port, maintain, or test IT systems and software that meet clients’ requirements. Development is the most lucrative as it allows providers to create new solutions that typically command a higher price, followed by porting, which involves migrating an existing solution from one environment to another (for example, Windows 8 to Windows 10). Maintenance and testing are less lucrative as they involve troubleshooting or validating existing solutions, although maintenance comprises the largest volume of business for many companies. IBM and Accenture have their own IT services SBUs, and are major players in this space, along with HP, Fujitsu, and Indian IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Limited. Finally, BPO services in the IT industry typically focus on call center operations and other back office operations such as finance and accounting services and human resources management services, with Capgemini and Genpact among the major players. For the most part, Global Tech is focused on IT and BPO services, although it also provides IT consulting services to some clients.

A majority of the company’s business comes from North America, with three clients – Costco Wholesale, Safeway, and WellPoint Health Networks – making up almost 25%. In addition to these three clients, the company has almost 500 smaller US clients in various industries such as banking & financial services, energy & utilities, media & entertainment, public sector, retail, and telecommunications. Most of the work for Costco and WellPoint involves the maintenance of legacy mainframe solutions, but this has been decreasing over time as clients port their old mainframe solutions to more stable solutions from Oracle and Microsoft. The work for Safeway, on the other hand, involves a balanced mix of development, porting, and maintenance, and the work for the company’s other clients broadly follows its balanced mix for Safeway. Global Tech also has alliances with IBM and Microsoft, which allow it to position itself as a preferred IT services provider for products, services, or consulting solutions involving these companies.

Although the company has been around for almost 20 years, it has grown organically along many dimensions, and the senior management has been exploring some strategic moves to set course for the next ten years and beyond. For starters, almost everyone on the senior management team felt that the company needed a clear mission statement that went beyond the company’s vision. Additionally, they agreed on the need to have a clear positioning, but they could not agree on what would be best for Global Tech in terms of the customers it should focus on, and what message it should highlight in its marketing communications. At a recent meeting, the VP of Marketing also stressed the need to be more mindful in redesigning the company’s logo (currently just the company’s name in plain, black text), with special focus on a distinct color palette that would also be consistent with the company’s positioning.

Finally, the CEO repeated an issue that she had been highlighting for some time: that the company should be more scientific in the way it decided on salesforce staffing. She felt that the company’s salesforce had pretty much grown at the same rate as the rest of the company, with growth across the rest of the company being driven by increased headcount at the offshore operations. Although offshore headcount might indicate volume of business and, thereby, appropriate salesforce size, given that up to 33% of the offshore team was sometimes on the “bench,” without active projects to work on, it was possible that the company didn’t need as many salespeople either. On the other hand, it was possible that the current salesforce was operating at maximum capacity, so adding more salespeople might generate more business, but it was difficult to say for sure.

The VP of Sales was tasked with validating whether the current salesforce size was appropriate or not. To determine this, he decided that he would continue with the company’s current expectation that, on average, each salesperson made one daily sales call per client or prospect. He knew that the annual overall salesforce objectives included getting 10 new clients, but that this would require engaging with at least 100 prospects. He also wanted to distinguish between call frequency for prospects (twice a week) and clients (weekly for 10 of the company’s biggest accounts and fortnightly for the other accounts, in order to keep repeat business flowing in small increments at regular intervals). Armed with this information, he set out to address the task before him.

 

8) Perform a SWOT Analysis for Global Tech. Please ensure that you analyze the main issues (as opposed to identifying and listing case facts).

9) Do you agree with Global Tech’s vision? Why or why not? Based on what you think might be an appropriate vision for the company, come up with a good mission statement for Global Tech, and explain why it is a good mission statement.

10) Explain which customers Global Tech should focus on, and what its key message to these customers should be. Based on the customers and message, what would a good brand logo look like, and why?

11) Estimate and explain what you think the company’s salesforce size should be.

 

Examine the facts and the data contained in the case, employ the analytical frameworks learned in earlier classes (and concurrently), reach conclusions, and make specific recommendations that will resolve the issues presented by the case.

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Case Report

Cases provide a context for application of analytic concepts, and illustrate the issues that arise in the complex decision making situations that typically face top-management. As in real business problems, there are no “right’’ answers for case studies that we will examine in the course, although there are correct and incorrect ways to analyze or approach them. The challenge for the student is to

  • (1) examine the facts and the data contained in the case,
  • (2) employ the analytical frameworks learned in earlier classes (and concurrently),
  • (3) reach conclusions, and
  • (4) make specific recommendations that will resolve the issues presented by the case

To prepare for a case, you should read the case and analyze the data that it presents. Texts and readings from earlier courses should be used to the extent that they assist in your preparation. A thorough preparation for discussions includes systematically

  • (1) outlining the major issue presented by the case,
  • (2) identifying the analytical techniques or frameworks appropriate for resolving the problem, and (very important)
  • (3) outlining steps to implement a specific course of action that is supported by the analysis. Also need both excel and word file

What criteria should be considered when making the decisions? How will the decisions made influence the production process performance? Summarize key points from the supply chain decision-making analysis.

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MGMT465 Unit 2 Individual Project

The ability of a supply chain to collaborate cross-functionally to manage materials, production, packaging, and transportation effectively is imperative to today’s supply chain operation. Supply chain managers need to practice thoughtful decision making during production planning to achieve its goals.

Complete a supply chain decision-making analysis of a given supply chain production problem. Create an infographic in PowerPoint, showing the decisions that you would recommend to resolve the problem and how each decision resolves.

Use this template to complete the assignment: Unit 2 template. Complete the following:

  • Introduce the practice of decision making in a supply chain operation, including the types of decisions required to manage a supply chain effectively.
  • Assess the given supply chain production problem, and create an infographic slide that includes how each recommended decision contributes to resolving the production problem.
  • Examine a given supply chain production decision.
  • Assess how making a different decision would improve the production process. Consider the following:
    • What criteria should be considered when making the decisions?
    • How will the decisions made influence the production process performance?
    • Summarize key points from the supply chain decision-making analysis.

Watch one or both of the following videos on how to create an infographic:

Summarize the article. Explain the ethical dilemma. Explain how each stakeholder is impacted by the ethical dilemma.

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Discussion post

This is a discussion post for sport ethics class

Bring any article you want on : Media “sport media ” since its sport ethics classes

Follow this process for part one of the assignment:

  • Summarize the article.
  • Explain the ethical dilemma.
  • Explain how each stakeholder is impacted by the ethical dilemma.
  • Solution/Conclusion to the ethical dilemma

How could SWOT analysis be used to align training activities with business strategies and goals?

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Discussion chapter 2

How could SWOT analysis be used to align training activities with business strategies and goals?

What instructional characteristics does the Navy’s new training program include that facilitate learning and transfer? List each of the characteristics and explain how it enhances learning and transfer.

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Case: Revised Training for the U.S. Navy

In 2017, 17 U.S. Navy sailors died in collisions involving its ships. Congressional investigations identified inadequate training in the foundational skills of seamanship as one of the likely causes for the collisions. The Navy is revising training methods for more than 75 percent of its occupations. Most of the training curriculum is hands-on work with simulations and interactive courseware with 20 percent being lecture. For example, during bootcamp the Navy has reduced the amount of time new recruits spend in the classroom and instead focus more on experiential learning to simulate conditions aboard a ship in war or peacetime. Recruits now participate in 177 hours of hands-on training during the eight weeks at boot camp, an increase of 17 hours. Officers in charge of bootcamp divisions of approximately 88 recruits evaluate their division’s weaknesses and use time to have them practice skills such as tying knots to anchor a ship rather than participate in online learning. The training involves doing multiple repetitions of the skills to ensure they are retained. Recruits spend two days on a life-size replica of a deck of a ship. The recruits practice tying lines, relaying orders, getting a ship underway, and bringing it back to port. During practice, instructors ring a bell every time recruits make a mistake. To graduate, recruits must pass an all night test in a simulator designed like the deck and hull of a warship. There are explosions to deal with, leaking pipes to repair, and fires to extinguish. The Navy is also providing specialized training after sailors finish boot camp.

*What instructional characteristics does the Navy’s new training program include that facilitate learning and transfer? List each of the characteristics and explain how it enhances learning and transfer.

* What transfer of training theory has been used to design the training? Explain the theory and how it is being used in the training.

*Explain how a community of practice (COP) could be beneficial for Navy training.