Assignment 1: Discussion Question
Valuation of a firm’s financial assets is said to be based on what is expected in the future, in terms of the future performance of the firm, the industry, and the economy. What types of value would you consider when assigning “value” to a firm’s stock or bond? What is the significance of each of the different types of value in the valuation process? Use examples to support your response.
By Saturday, January 9, 2016,
You have been hired as the HR manager for a marketing company, Forward Style Inc., with 65 employees. Your first item of business is to evaluate the company’s rewards program to determine if legal requirements are being met by the company.
Write an APA paper using no more than 1,050 words to explain which of their offered benefits are required by law and which of the benefits are being used to attract employees. Also, include in your paper how the offered benefits effect the organization based on the above scenario. The company offers the following benefits:
• Private retirement plan
• Medical insurance
• Disability insurance
• Social insurance, including social security, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation
• Pay for time not worked
• Stock options
• Child care
• Family and medical leave of 6 paid weeks and up to 6 additional unpaid weeks
Application: Using Performance Reports to Inform Organizational Decisions
Very often, managers are called upon to make decisions “by the numbers.” In this Assignment, you will sort through a budget report from the fictitious Honey Bear Confections (HBC) organization in order to make decisions about productivity levels
HBC is a small organization dedicated to making bear-shaped sweets with honey as a sugar substitute. You have just been promoted to a position as manager of the production department at HBC when your supervisor shows you the following report. She tells you to “get it fixed.” You suspect she is alluding to a problem with productivity and efficiency.
For this Assignment, review the Static Budget Report provided. Additionally, you may find valuable information in your course text, especially Exercise 6-3.
HINT: for more information about this, see the Weekly Briefing and the Performance Report video. Laureate Education (Producer). (2014). Performance report [Multimedia file]. Baltimore, MD: Author
Honey Bear Confections (HBC)
Manufacturing Overhead Static Budget Report
For the Month Ended June 20XX
| Budget | Actual | Variance (U or F) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production in bags of candy | 10,000 | 12,000 | 2,000F |
| Costs: | |||
| Indirect labor | $26,000 | $31,200 | $5,200U |
| Supplies | $25,000 | $29,500 | $4,500U |
| Utilities | $19,000 | $22,500 | $3,500U |
| TOTAL | $70,000 | $83,200 | $13,200U |
The Assignment:
Submit your Application (both your Excel and Word files) by Day 7.
To submit your Assignment, do the following:
General Guidance on Assignment Length:
The memo portion of this application will typically be 2–3 paragraphs in length as a general expectation/estimate for each bullet point. Refer to the rubric for the Week 2 Application for grading elements and criteria for the performance report and the memo. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.
The nature of ethical decision making requires that we understand mistakes made by individuals and organizations in the past and evaluate the ways in which personal values interact with organizational culture to increase the likelihood of unethical decisions. This activity allows you to build your evaluation skills by identifying issues that create environments more likely to fall prey to unethical decision making through policies, procedures, and organizational norms. The 1977 Ford Pinto case is often studied in order to help create a deeper understanding about the dilemmas that not only impact an organization’s public persona, long-term profitability, and consumer safety, but also each employee’s responsibility for the decisions.
Read the article: Dowie, M. (1977, September/October). Pinto madness. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness
Prepare a case analysis on the topic.
Locate and research at least three sources (excluding the Dowie’s article and your text) to discover additional information about the company and its ethical dilemma. Use your text to create a foundation for the ethics theory. This must be a concise evaluation of the case, so provide information on your understanding of the application of theory and personal values.
Develop your case analysis using the five following sections:
Section 1: Introduction and situational analysis: Describe the ethical dilemma, giving appropriate background information. The term “dilemma” implies that there are pros and cons to various options, even if some are clearly more socially acceptable than others. This is also where you do your situational analysis – identifying factors related to the individual(s) involved (consider the readings from this module), company and managerial practices and policies, external factors such as economic pressure, and any other aspects of the situation that you believe helped create the dilemma.
Section 2: Stakeholder analysis: Identify the key stakeholders and how they are potentially impacted by the various options inherent in the dilemma.
Section 3: Analysis based on ethical theories: Analyze the ethical dilemma from the perspective of cultural relativism (how it relates to cultural norms – what society would view as acceptable, as well as what is legal), teleology (looking at consequences and acting for the greater good), deontology (duties and principles), and virtue.
Note that the stakeholder analysis is particularly pertinent to the consequentialist approach, and that one of the challenges is estimating the positive and negative impacts on relevant stakeholders. Do the best you can, looking at both good and bad consequences for each stakeholder group. Make sure you summarize the overall situation and come to a conclusion about the greater good.
Section 4: Conclusion and recommendations. Up to now, you have been analyzing and comparing options. Here is where you pull together the different threads of your analysis and determine whether or not the company did the right thing. Also, make recommendations about what the company should have done. Make sure your justifications clearly flow from your analysis. Make managerial and policy recommendations that would help avoid similar ethical dilemmas in the future and provide guidance to help those facing a similar dilemma.
Section 5: References. List at least three sources (in addition to the Dowie’s article and your text) where you located additional information about the company and the associated ethical dilemma(s).
General guidance: Include a title page, and label the five sections. Your paper should be 2-3 pages in length, not including the title and reference pages. All citations should be in APA 6th Edition format. Double space your paper, use Times New Roman, 12-point font, with one inch margins. For more information, link to APA Tip Sheet, 6th ed.[PDF file size 177 KB]
The essence of presentation is making yourself known, along with your ideas. There are at least two reasons to begin the planning of any presentation with a consideration of yourself. The first is that your knowledge of yourself and what you are thinking about provides a solid foundation for elaborating on your ideas and your topics. The second is that your constant self-assessment means that you can define and communicate your own feelings and beliefs about a topic from a deeper level of metacognition, or self-knowledge, and can therefore think more critically and objectively about your topic.
Before building a presentation, consider the types of things that you have done and the types of things that are important to you. These things will be woven into every presentation you give, whether formal or informal, large or small, and regardless of the topic. Here, you will think about yourself as a primary topic and reflect upon your own academic and professional goals. This approach to preparation will influence the ways in which you present in the future.
Part A
In paragraph form, answer the following questions that may affect how you think about presentations, your topics, and your audience:
Part B
For this part of the assignment, you will be preparing or updating your resume. Upon reflection of your answers in Part A, rethink your resume, and update it as appropriate to incorporate your experiences and goals. In addition, review your resume format. If you already have a template for your resume that works, that’s great.
If you would like to refresh your resume presentation, clickhere for a sample template.
Please submit your assignment as a single Word document, with your Part-A responses preceding your resume from Part B.
Purpose of Assignment and Content Development Demonstrates an outstanding use of appropriate, relevant, and compelling content with excellent expression of topic, main idea, and purpose. Demonstrates exemplary knowledge or analysis of human perspectives appropriate to the assignment’s purpose and context.
Where applicable, graphics accurately reflect the assignment requirements.
30% Organization, Grammar, and Presentation Organization is clear. Language clearly and effectively communicates ideas and content relevant to the assignment.
Presentation and delivery are confident and persuasive (where applicable).
Audience, style, tone, and perspective are consistent and appropriate to the assignment.
Few, if any, errors in grammar, spelling, and sentence structure.
30% Information Literacy and Research Demonstrates outstanding selection and use of high-quality, credible, and relevant sources to develop ideas that are appropriate to the assignment. Sources are consistently cited.
0% Critical Thinking Demonstrates outstanding or exemplary ability to analyze assumptions and evaluate evidence, complexities of issues, and alternatives. Where required, demonstrates outstanding or exemplary ability to use creativity and originality in problem solving.
40%
Beltway Shoe Company sells luxury leather shoes in the United States. The company monitors its shoe sales by collecting randomly chosen data from store locations throughout the country. They record original price, sale price, and number of days it takes to sell each unit. Each pair of shoes is classified as “Eastern Region” if it is sold in the Eastern part of the United States, or as “Western Region” if it is sold in the Western part of the country. Randomly chosen samples provided sales data for 50 Western Region and 50 Eastern Region pairs of shoes. The complete data set is in the file named Shoes, attached in Excel document
Managerial Report
Prepare a report (see below) that summarizes your assessment of the nature of the shoe market in each region. Be sure to include the following seven (7) items in your report.
Write a report, you should have in-text citations and a reference page.
Your report must contain following:
Submit your Excel file in addition to your report.
Describe the importance of leadership and provide examples of your leadership style and leadership that you demonstrate in your school, communities or work.
Sampling strategy and sampling size
Name:
Institution:
Course:
Date:
Introduction
It is very difficult for researchers to make direct observations to everyone in the population in which they are studying. Due to this fact, they collect data about the population from a sample, which is a subset of individuals. A sample is a group of people who participate in a study or an investigation. Sampling is the process of choosing those who a researcher needs to engage from a population. The population is the group of individuals from where a sample is to be obtained. Generalizability is how we can implement the inferences and interpretations of research to the population of study. They then use these observations to construct inferences concerning the overall population. The agenda of the sample and the sampling strategy is to enhance generalizability of the study. The most crucial feature of any research is its capability to be generalized to the overall population. This gives the research a more scientific value. However, if the interpretations and inferences gathered from a sample are not inferred, we say that the research has a trivial scientific value. If a sample gives a detailed information about the targeted population, then the inferences obtained from the sample can be implemented.
Population
This study involves adults of ages between 15 and 45 years of both genders diagnosed with Schizophrenics and are taking Complementary Medicine for Schizophrenics. The participants I studied have been taking the dosage for eight months or less. Most of them participated in a face-to-face or a web-based disease-specific support for six months and ten months. Most of them are not in the remission and relapse stage that is life gets back to normal. There is no overall consensus of the population diagnosed with Schizophrenics. However, according to NIMH, the number of people who suffer from Schizophrenics in the USA is about 2.2 million individuals (Nachmias & Frankfort-Nachmias, 2008).
Type of sampling
In this study, I employed the quasi-experimental design. This design enabled me to utilize both the face-to-face support and the web-based disease-specific support between six and ten months. The agenda of this strategy is to gather a probability sample that ensures that each in the involved population has an equal opportunity to be part of the sample. This sample is collected in a random manner. This lowers the instances of the non-representative sample. The next aim is to remove those not diagnosed with Schizophrenics or are taking a dosage for at least eight months and also those in remission and relapse stage. I will then employ the systematic sampling. This method chooses the subjects in a logical or orderly manner. I will list all the participants in a specified interval. I will then divide the number of individuals by the number of people I need to the sample and get a value n. If now you consider each nth name, you will obtain a systematic sample of the appropriate or correct size. For instance if I get 300 responses and I need 37 participants, I would take 300 as the number of people in the population then I divide by 37 which is the number of people I need to the sample. This is 300/37 which equals to 8.12 or 13. We say it is a 1-in-8 systematic sample (Marques, 2011).
How the sample will be drawn
To gather participation in face-to-face support, I will pay a visit to various medical centers that deal with Schizophrenics. I will also make an advertisement in various mental disorder support groups. For those who participate in the web-based disease-specific support, I will request them through calling for participation in some forums. The responses to these adverts will be chosen through systematic sampling. (Somekh & Lewin, 2005)
Sample size
Take into consideration that we do not know the exact individuals suffering from Schizophrenics. This study involves a few participants. For this case, I used the Cohen’s d test for two samples. The sample size should accommodate 37 participants in each interval. From the inversion formula from (Nachmias & Frankfort-Nachmias, 2008) which is SE-s/sqrt n, n=s2/SE2, I gathered 37 participants per group. From our two methods, making use of 37 participants per group is an appropriate size. The reason as to why I selected this sample size is because I wanted to maximize the cases of uncovering a particular mean difference. Using larger samples increases the possibilities of obtaining a significant difference. This is so because they reliably show or reflect the population mean or the systematic sample. However, they will cost you more.
References
Marques, S. &. (2011). Living in gray areas: Industrial and psychological health. New York: Journal of Environmental Psychology, 31(4), 314-322. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.12.002.
Nachmias, D., & Frankfort-Nachmias, C. (2008). Research methods in the social sciences. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Somekh, B., & Lewin, C. (2005). Research methods in the social sciences. London: SAGE Publications.
You are the hospital administrator for a county hospital, which is funded in a large part by that county’s property taxes. You discover that you have an indigent patient who has been mistakenly admitted as an inpatient to the hospital strictly for dialysis treatment. The hospital does not, as a general practice, provide only dialysis treatment for patients. This is beyond the scope of the hospital’s mandate and is therefore, an inappropriate use of local property tax funding.
If the indigent patient is discharged from the hospital and dialysis treatment is terminated, the patient will become toxic and experience severe physical consequences, even death. However, if the patient is kept in the hospital for purposes of dialysis treatment only, the hospital must assume the burden of the patient’s debt, without revenue to cover the associated cost.
Based on your understanding of the above scenario, create a 2- to 3-page report in a Microsoft Word document that includes:
Support your responses with examples.
Cite any sources in APA format.
After reviewing section 2.4 of the text titled International and Intercultural Interpersonal Communication, visit The Hofstede Centre (http://geert-hofstede.com/national-culture.html) and continue to explore national cultural dimensions. Using the navigation bar, hover over the “Cultural Tools” item, and then click on “Country Comparison” from the drop-down menu. Here you will choose two countries to compare and contrast in terms of cultural dimensions.
Develop a two-page, APA-formatted paper that addresses the following:
Your paper must be two pages (not including title and reference pages) and must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the approved APA style guide. You must cite at least two scholarly sources in addition to the textbook.