...Strategic management BIG CASE DISCUSSION 4 (Question 3&4 of the external analysis) I. What factors are driving industry changes, and what impacts will these changes have on competitive intensity and industry profitability? * Driving forces 1) Increasing globalization: * New markets in Canada and UK: WF has acquired Wild Oats Market in the US and Canada. - New competitors from neighbor countries like Fresh & Easy from British supermarket giant Tesco. * Products from other countries, for example: Lebanese fig jam, preserved lemons from Morocco, Indian curies, Thai rice, stuffed grape leaves from Greece, and goulash from Hungary. 2) Changes in the long-term industry growth rate: - Natural food generated $22.3 billion in sales in US in 2008, up 10% from 2007, and up 37% from 2004. - UPC-coded organic foods accounted for 49 billion in sale, 16% higher than the previous year, and up 132% since 2004. - Global sales of organic products were estimated to be $52 billion in 2008 and to have grown at the compound rate of 13% since 2004. 3) Changing societal concerns, attitudes, and lifestyles - People are more concern about health and food safety -> Consumer demand for organic products growing at double-digit rates – much larger than that of the traditional grocery products (2-3%) - Demand for value-priced: The United States now spends more than $1 billion a year to import organic food, according to the USDA, and the ratio of imported to exported...
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...conference and Web conference for reducing their travel expenses so we can say that Video conference and Web conference will make business travel extinct. Question2: What is the distinction between video conferencing and telepresence? Answer: There are some distinction between video conferencing and telepresence. Videoconferencing uses low technology but telepresence uses higher technology. Videoconferencing’s performance quality is low but telepresence performance quality is very high. Videoconferencing installation cost is not much expensive but telepresence installation cost is very much expensive. Big and small both organizations use Videoconferencing but only big organization can use telepresence because of its high expense. Question3: What are the ways in which videoconferencing provides value to a business? Would you consider it smart management? Explain your answer. Answer: The ways in which videoconferencing provides value to a business is saving the cost and time. Videoconferencing can be more direct that communicating through email, letter immediately. However, if the business required a lot of customer, I would consider it smart management to...
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...ASSIGNMENT 1 COMP-202, Fall 2014, All Sections Due: September 19th , 2014 (23:59) Please read the entire pdf before starting. You must do this assignment individually and, unless otherwise specified, you must follow all the general instructions and regulations for assignments. Graders have the discretion to deduct up to 10% of the value of this assignment for deviations from the general instructions and regulations. These regulations are posted on the course website. Be sure to read them before starting. Question 1: Question 2: Question 3: 60 points 20 points 20 points 100 points total It is very important that you follow the directions as closely as possible. The directions, while perhaps tedious, are designed to make it as easy as possible for the TAs to mark the assignments by letting them run your assignment through automated tests. While these tests will not determine your entire grade, it will speed up the process significantly, which will allow the TAs to provide better feedback and not waste time on administrative details. Plus, if the TA is in a good mood while he or she is grading, then that increases the chance of them giving out partial marks. Marks can be removed if comments are missing, if the code is not well structured, or if your solution does not follow the assignment specifications. Assignment Question 1: Scratch Project (60 points) You are to head to http://scratch.mit.edu/ and create an account. Start by exploring some projects, and click on the see...
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...http://cplusplus-answers.blogspot.com/search?q=10552 1 Marks: 1 Characters or symbols that perform operations on one or more operands are: Choose one answer. | a. Syntax | | | b. Op codes | | | c. Operators | | | d. Program ops | | | e. None of the above | | Correct Marks for this submission: 1/1. Question2 Marks: 1 Programmer-defined names of memory locations that may hold data are: Choose one answer. | a. Operators | | | b. Variables | | | c. Syntax | | | d. Operands | | | e. None of the above. | | Correct Marks for this submission: 1/1. Question3 Marks: 1 Which of the following best describes an operator? Choose one answer. | a. An operator is a rule that must be followed when constructing a program. | | | b. An operator allows you to perform operations on one or more pieces of data. | | | c. An operator marks the beginning or ending of a statement, or is used to separate items in a list. | | | d. An operator is a word that has a special meaning. | | | e. An operator is a symbolic name that refers to a variable. | | Correct Marks for this submission: 1/1. Question4 Marks: 1 What does the term hardware refer to? Choose one answer. | a. The relative difficulty of programming | | | b. The physical components that a computer is made of | | | c. The way a computer's storage space is organized | | | d. The logical flow of instructions | | | e. None of the above...
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...February 16, 2015 Angela Koch Operations Management – 3380 FHE, INC – CASE STUDY Discussion Questions 1) What steps should Donaldson take to improve the new-product development process at FHE? I would be remiss if we didn’t start by mentioning that the problem actually started with the Executive Management Team and the CEO. The organization chart shows a lack of cross-functional decision making which results in the inability to integrate operations. I don’t believe it is his place, but Lum Donaldson should suggest that Phil Thomas, vice president of corporate development and marketing who is currently responsible for both areas of marketing and design engineering split his duties and Merle Alison who is obviously in charge of the engineering group be put in charge of design engineering. Phil, needs to do what he does best and lead the marketing team to working with customers to create demand of the company’s products. This way there can be clear direction designed for the coordination of successful introduction of new products. With an extended Executive Committee consisting of Phil Thomas, Merle Alison and Norman Hart there will be more collaboration and better insight to running a new product through the companys processes. Lum Donaldson needs to coordinate the relationship between product managers, technical program managers, and marketing managers. Lum needs to clearly define the requirements necessary at each phase of project development so that the engineering...
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...Question1: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is applicable in this case. It is a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. In this case, the plaintiff think she suffered discrimination due to her personal religious beliefs that she needs to wear a headscarf during the month of Ramadan, which violated her company's dress code. Question2: Disparate treatment would have to be intentional discrimination. So I do not think it is disparate treatment in this case the discrimination was not intentional. Question3: Disparate impact refers the rule or regulation is fair and applies to everybody, but hurts some groups or people more than others. This is disparate impact because in this case, the company dress code policy applies to every employee that is fair but that really hurt Muslims more than other employees because they are required to wear a headscarf during the Ramadan. Plaintiff: The dress code policy of company affects Muslims because they are required to wear a headscarf during the Ramadan. Defendant: They has a very strict company dress code policy that applies to everyone, and headscarves are not allowed to be worn because that would violate the company’s dress code policy Plaintiff: She shows other people who have religions and wear religious clothing that violated the company’s dress code policy but don't be condemned. Question4: I don't think...
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...Discussion Questio SCI/256 November4,2013 Dr. Moseley Discussion Question3 With health care improvement, the age structure of the human population, mostly in developed countries, skewed toward the older population. Meaning the increasing percentage of the population is nearly consist of people near retirement. Especially, if the country is supporting social services, this means an increasing load on health care, pension, and all other services for senior citizens that must be with the tax increase as well as consumer goods and services costs for qualified people of age. Age composition of a population gives us important facts that one can use. For example; if there are older people and few you fewer young people, then we need to consider the birth control policies. If there is more young people than older people, medical implicates, that the health of the elderly are not being properly address. There is a social, economic as well as a political implications, too, since there is a population of majority of young people means there is little social guidance, and less of an older generation to teach the younger generation what one really need to know and knowledge availability to run a government or a business. Also, resources like food supplies and raw materials is affected by makeup age of a population, with different group age tending to consume resources in many ways , as if the bulge of young people, that is, going to reproduce, this one main concern...
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...with objectives relative to poverty, women, and resources. This change that she found created a need for organizational change, as CARE was based on single national units functioning autonomously. The new mission now meant that there must be international collaboration in order to achieve the objectives set. Question 2: CARE's decentralized approach stems from the fact that the individual country officers raised their own funds and were used to being on their own, as stated in the case. They functioned autonomously as single units and did not see the bigger picture. This could be due to the fact that the organization's previous mission was a vague one that may have not been properly communicated throughout its separate divisions. Question3: As stated previously, the root of the decentralized design in CARE is the fact that the mission was vague and there was a lack of communication across borders. In order to improve collaboration, the first step would be to establish proper communication lines that go across all of the divisions, and most importantly two way communication lines. The company's new mission must then be embodied and shared throughout all of the divisions, and that will create a whole unit. Measurement of results would also improve collaboration in order to determine effectiveness. Question 4: The project "Access Africa" is an effort to implement cross country collaboration that involves micro financing small entrepreneurial investments to reduce poverty...
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...Name: Organization: Age: Qualification: Lateral thinking puzzles that challenge your preconceptions. 1. You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three people waiting for the bus |An old lady who looks as if she is about to die. | |An old friend who once saved your life. | |The perfect partner you have been dreaming about. | |Knowing that there can be only one passenger in your car,whom would you choose? | 2. Acting on an anonymous phone call, the police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don't know what he looks like but they know his name is John and that he is inside the house. The police bust in on a carpenter, a lorry driver, a mechanic and a fireman all playing poker. Without hesitation or communication of any kind, they immediately arrest the fireman. How do they know they've got their man? 3. A man lives in the penthouse of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building. Upon his return, however, he can only travel halfway up in the lift and has to walk the rest of the way - unless it's raining. What is the explanation for...
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...management and procurement. CEO and it consultant involvement in the project steering committee and adequate training and change management . Question 2: What are the risks facing El-Alamein in implementing the ERP system? How do you evaluate the actions taken from their side to mitigate those risk factors? A. The company has identified key persons from all the functional areas who will act as change agents and take responsibility of persuading other employees of the importance of the system B. Train users to use the new system and understand how the business process will be affected. They have fostered end-user project participation by involving more employees than just senior management in the decision, analysis and implementation. Question3: What value did the IT/IS /investments add to El-Alamein? After two years of implementing various technologies ,El-Alamein has reduced investment risks, strengthened process integrations improved productivity and enhanced...
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...Buy it on Credit and be True to Your School – Ethics Paper Akhil Rangaraju MG 670 Fundamentals of Corporate Finance King Graduate School Question1: Should Universities enter into agreements to offer affinity credit cards to students? Answer: List down the facts of the case. Banks offer credit cards to students in the hope that if they can’t pay their bills, their parents will. Over a period of time banks also expect them to turn into loyal customer. Ideal Customer: Students are also ideal customer as they tend to carry more balances on their card than other bank customers. This has led to increase in burden of student debt which may impair their future credit capacity. This is more so because banks employed questionable marketing and sales tactics to issue credit cards to students. Growing Student Debt: It is also noted that student debt has been growing over a period of time. Not only the number of students having credit card has been going up, the average balance has also been going up over the years. Growing student debt causes serious problem for them in futures. Reasonable Reason for Credit Card: On the other hand, students seem to be getting credit cards to create a credit history and for emergency protection. They also get credit card for convenience and do not max out their credit limits. All these seem to be valid reason for them to have a credit card. Affinity Card: Recently, credit card companies have started issuing affinity card. Affinity card gives...
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...Human Resource Case Study Question1. Does Hampton's new HR strategy fit with the hotel's business strategy? Answer: If you're not 100% satisfied, we don't expect you to pay. That's Hampton’s new HR strategy. This guarantee allows every Hampton Inn employee to do whatever it takes to satisfy guests- including giving them their money back. Furthermore, every employee would go through a three-day training program, they knew that the guarantee ”100% satisfaction” was something special. It became more and more apparent that the new Hampton Inn guarantee would affect all of their jobs, each team member owns this promise to every guest: friendly service, clean rooms, comfortable surroundings, every time. That’s their commitment and guarantee. The Hampton Inn believes that guests who go away impressed with the way that the company handled a problem will spread the word and generate additional business for the chain. As a result of this, the Hampton Inn has been making profits, this indicates that the strategies put in place Human resource strategies have been effective and have assisted the resorts in increasing their sales and turnover and eventually higher profits. Therefore, Hampton's new HR strategy perfectly fit with the hotel's business strategy. Question2. How does Hampton's new HR strategy allow the hotel to deal with environment threats more effectively? Answer: For many companies, improving quality standards and keeping customers...
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...TMA01 Question1: i. Point of connection: known as a socket it is used to gain access to a communication network that enables users to use different services. For example, it is possible to make a phone call from a fixed telephone at home to some one using a mobile phone. ii. Modem: it is an interface device that is connected between your computer and your telephone line. iii. Time division multiplexing and multiplexers: TDM allows switches to create channels, also known as tributaries, within a transmission stream. iv. Cable station and earth stations: Cables terminate at cable stations whereas satellite links terminate at Earth stations. Cable stations are normally located near to the coast where the cables land. However, Earth stations have been in remote locations to isolate them from electrical interference. v. International access link: Having considered communication between two countries, the next step is to extend the cable and satellite links to centers of population and commerce. These extensions are often referred to as international access links, and are usually concentrated at a small number of locations, depending upon the traffic. vi. Internet: The Internet carries various information resources and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer and file sharing. Question2: a) ↑ ...
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...Sustainable Procurement: Question1: Short definition of sustainable procurement Sustainable procurement is a process where organization meets their needs for goods and services, works utilities (water, gas, electricity etc.) in a way that they will achieve value for money. Not only benefit to the organization but also to the public and society, the economy while the damage toward environment is minimized. Question2: why it is needed? Sustainable procurement is needed because we need to reduce the waste that we are producing. It is the long term cost effectiveness. Saving energy, reducing water consumption. Encourage reuse and recycle, to protect the environment and the biodiversity. Question3: what unique challenges do sustainable buyers face? With buyers will not know where the products they are purchasing made from as in where and what kind of materials. It is a tricky situation for the buyers, as not always the suppliers will tell them. Buyers will face the difficulties of not knowing if the product is sustainable or not and therefore may making the wrong decision. With the suppliers implementing that the products is sustainable but is this really true? Question4: which tools are available to buyers in order to help them make the best ethical buying decisions? Buyers can look at the suppliers CSR, the ISO that they have in order to have a clear view. Company that have ISO in hold mean they are following the indication of the International Standard...
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...thus agreeing on one person’s idea, which after all turned out to be a wrong one that led to poor performance and did not satisfy their clients. Question2 The group phenomenon that were dominant in this adverts team decision making was that the team had a group pressure that came from their leader, which led to a problem of groupthink. Through nominal group technique, the team would have developed an open discussion where all members would have shared their ideas in order to reduce sub-optimal decisions in the case. After sharing and discussing their ideas the technique would have allowed the members with the help of their team manager to vote for the best ideas. This technique would have eliminated the use of one person’s idea. Question3 In characterizing the advert team, one thing is that the group failed to perform as a team. Their leader’s character developed poor performance of the team. There was only one idea of one person of the team that the team used. This led to poor...
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