Contemporary Canadian Business Law , Chapter 4 (Pg. 78) Case 4

A university operated a tavern on its premises for the benefit of its students. One student, who attended the tavern with some friends for the purpose of celebrating the end of the fall semester, became quite drunk. The tavern bartenders realized that the student was drunk around 11:00 p.m. and refused to serve him any additional alcoholic beverages. They also asked him to leave the premises. The student, however, remained and drank two additional beers that were purchased for him by his friends. Some time later, around 12 a.m., one of the bartenders noticed the student drinking and instructed the tavern bouncer to ask the student to leave. The bouncer did so, but the student refused, and the bouncer took the student by the arm and escorted him to the door. Along the hallway to the door the student was abusive and resisted leaving, but the bouncer managed to eject him from the building. A few minutes later, the student returned to the tavern and slipped by the doorman for the alleged
purpose of obtaining an explanation as to why he had been ejected. About eight feet from the door, he was apprehended by the bouncer and once again expelled from the tavern, but not without some resistance in the form of pushing and shoving and abusive language on the part of the student. In the course of ejection, the student fell against the door and smashed a glass pane in the door, which caused severe lacerations to his hand. The injury to the student’s hand required medical treatment and took several months to heal. The student brought an action against the university and the bouncer, claiming damages and claiming as well that the injury he received caused him to fail his mathematics course in the semester that followed the accident. Discuss the issues raised in this case and the various arguments that each party might raise. Render a decision.

1. What elements of a high-performance work system (Figure 9.1) does Tasty Catering seem to have?
2. Drawing from the principles in this chapter, briefly recommend one other way that Tasty Catering could maintain a high-performance work system.

The duration and resource usage for each activity are showed in the table below.

Assume the maximum number of painters is 1. Level the resources by following the rule "Delay the activity with the most positive slack first". How much slack time (in days) does acitivity C have after leveling recources?

1. What problem will an organization experience if its employees don’t fully understand what is expected of them?
2. For development purpose pf performance management, a company might search through its database of performance feedback to find employees with accomplish that make them good candidates for projects or promotions. How would specific (instead of general) feedback support this problem?

You work for the HR department of a manufacturing firm. The company has 500 employees, a significant portion of whom have long tenure in the company.

Eric Jenkins, a department manager who was hired 2 years ago, contacted you, saying that he is interested in dismissing Laura Harrison. Laura has been with the company for the past 25 years. He is concerned that Laura is not adapting well to the new technological changes that took place in the company over the past year. Plus she is always debating every point with Eric, trying to argue that “this is not how we do things around here.” Eric feels that Laura’s knowledge of the business is stale, and she is displaying strong resistance to change and innovation. He also feels that she is not respecting him because she is much older than he is. They have had performance conversations in the past, but Laura does not seem interested in improving. Eric gave Laura a 3 out of 5 (meets expectations) in her last performance review, which was about a year ago.

Your company is not unionized and does not have a formal discipline procedure.

Questions:

1. What would you advise Eric to do? Should Eric dismiss Laura? Explain your rationale. What would be the consequences of dismissing and not dismissing Laura?
2. What additional information would be helpful to you in making your recommendation about this case?
3. Let’s say you decided not to dismiss Laura in the short run. What would be your recommended action plan to solve this problem?
4. What type of procedures would be helpful to have in this company? Provide your recommendations for structural changes so that cases such as these are more easily resolved.

1.Compute the two-period and four-period moving average predictions for the data set.

a. Prepare a line graph comparing the moving average predictions against the orig-inal data.

b. Do the moving averages tend to overestimate or underestimate the actual data? Why?

c. Compute forecasts for the next 2 years using the two-period and four-period moving average techniques.

2. Use regression analysis to fit a linear trend model to the data set.

a. What is the estimated regression function?

b. Interpret the R2 value for your model.

c. Prepare a line graph comparing the linear trend predictions against the original data.

d. What are the forecasts for the next 2 years using this technique?

Explain how the ANN model works. (use the steps listed below)

Step 1: Determine the Topology and Activation Function

Step 2: Initiation

Step 3: Calculating Error

Step 4: Weight Adjustment

Step 4: Weight Adjustment

Given a simple project illustrated in the following table

The required project completion time is 12. Assume that "Activity 1" actually finished at 3 weeks, and "Activity 2" actually finished at 2 weeks. Given the actual project progress, what is the LF (lastest time) of "Activity 4"?

A car rental company allows its customers to pick up a rental car at one location and return it to any of its locations. Currently, two locations (1 and 2) have 16 and 18 surplus cars, respectively; and four locations (3, 4, 5, and 6) each need 10 additional cars. Because 34 surplus cars are available at locations 1 and 2 combined, and 40 cars are needed at locations 3, 4, 5, and 6 combined, some locations will not receive as many cars as they need. Management wants to make sure all surplus cars are sent where they are needed, and that each location needing cars receives at least five. Management wants to do this with the lowest total miles added to the cars. The distance (in miles) from locations 1 and 2 to the other locations are summarized in the following table:

(1.1) Formulate a linear programming model for this problem

(1.2) Create a spreadsheet model for this problem and solve it using Solver. Submit your Excel file on iLearn.

(1.3) What is the optimal solution?

(1.4) Which location is receiving the fewest cars?

(1.5) Suppose location 6 must have at least eight cars shipped to it. What impact does this have on the optimal objective function value?

In 300 words answer the following questions

Assess whether Caterpillar Inc. leverages the appropriate value and cost drivers for their business strategy.

Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Caterpillar Inc’s competitive advantages.

questions

Study Discussion Questions

1. Whose perspective do you agree with—Sandy's or Grace's? Why?
2. Do you think there are important differences between the cases of Henrietta Lacks, Jean, and the Havasupai? Explain your answer.
3. Are there cases of advances in medical knowledge that do not, at least potentially, threaten to violate the privacy of individual patients?
4. Does a patient have the right to use the genetic information that belongs to her direct-lineage family members? Extended family or relatives? Other patients with a similar condition?
5. What moral, ethical, and legal protocols can be considered in guiding clinicians in this case?
6. What moral, ethical, and legal protocols can be considered in guiding researchers in this case?

imothy B. Patrick, Peter J. Tonellato, and Mark A. Hoffman

Two health sciences graduate students, Sandy and Grace, are discussing the value of clinical uses of genetic and genomic patient information.

Sandy: It's always the same story—the supposed trade-off between the benefits to society and the sacrificed rights of the individual! Just remember the case of Henrietta Lacks. HELA cells—cancer cells taken from Henrietta before she died—have been invaluable to medical science; they led to the polio vaccine and other medical “miracles.” But Henrietta was never told what was going to be done with her cells; she never gave her permission. Nor did her close relatives and family know or give their permission. It's a clear case of science overstepping its bounds to the detriment of the individual.

Grace: Sandy, you know that scientific research's benefit to society really means the medical care benefit to the individual. Don't you remember the recent case that took place here in our own hospital—the case of Jean, a 17-year-old who was visiting the home of a friend when she fell down, struck her head, and suffered serious injuries? She was raced to the emergency room, where she required emergency surgery, and neither her parents nor her relatives could be reached before the procedure. The mother of Jean's friend provided the hospital with Jean's name and home address, which allowed the ER personnel to associate Jean with her parents in the system. Using the hospital's healthcare information system, the surgeon entered an order for the protocol that she was planning to use to treat Jean. Among the details included in the protocol was the use of halothane, a type of anesthesia. Jean had never been the subject of genetic testing, but her father had had a genetic test that found a mutation in the ryanodine receptor gene. When people with this mutation are exposed to halothane, they can experience malignant hyperthermia, an often-fatal reaction that can cause the body's core temperature to reach 106 degrees Fahrenheit.

The hospital's information system used the demographic person–person relationship between the father and his daughter and embedded pharmacogenomics decision support capabilities to infer that Jean had a 50 percent risk of also possessing this rare mutation. The system flashed an interactive alert to the surgeon, who was unaware of this genetic association. The surgeon responded to the alert by activating an alternative surgical plan that did not include the use of halothane. It was only by taking advantage of the genetic information about Jean's father that a potentially catastrophic clinical event was averted!

Sandy: But you make my case for me. The potential for abuse of genetic data is magnified by the existence and use of sophisticated healthcare information systems. There's no mystery about the potential for abuse. Jean's father was the one who had the test, not Jean. Yet the information produced by the test was also about Jean. Sure, revealing that information happened to help Jean, but the principle is that the information was about Jean as much as it was about her father. And Jean never gave her permission for that information to be used or revealed! It's her body and her genome, not her father's, right? So it's her right to privacy that was violated.

Grace: It might be her body, Sandy, but given the genetic data and information, we are bound by our Hippocratic oath to do no harm—primum nil nocere in Latin.¹ In practice and in effect, Jean's life was ours to save. What other choice did we have?

Sandy: What about consent and protecting her privacy? And what about Jean's father? Did he give permission to release the information from his genetic test to be used in ways other than for his diagnosis and treatment? How is that different from the Havasupai tribe's lost-blood case?

Grace: Remind me about that case.

Sandy: Arizona State University researchers asked the Havasupai if they would provide blood for studies to discover clues about the tribe's incredible rate of diabetes, presumably to help the Havasupai. But the researchers used the collected blood for other purposes. They used the extracted DNA for studies on mental illness. The initial diabetes studies seem to have led nowhere, but even if that effort helped save lives, it would have been lives saved without the Havasupai's consent.

Grace: Sandy, for goodness sake, it was only blood!

Sandy: Not at all, Grace, not at all.

Note

1.The following Hippocratic oath is reprinted from North (2002):

I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement: To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art. I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts. I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art. In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves. All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal. If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

Read the scenario. Highlight the type of control described for each scenario. In other words, is it a behavior or an output control and is it a feedforward, concurrent or feedback control mechanism?

2. Employee drug use is a serious problem for employers. Possible consequences include injuries, illness, absenteeism, breakage, theft, and reduced productivity. Illegal drug use by employees costs U.S. industry an estimated $25 billion a year. The extent of this problem has challenged managers to find ways to discourage and prevent employee drug use. One approach is to implement a drug-testing program, most commonly based on urinalysis. (The employee supplies a urine sample that is chemically tested for traces of drugs in his or her system.) For example, Home Depot routinely tests all job applicants and all employees receiving promotions.

1. Is this method of controlling employee drug use an example of behavioral control or output control?
2. Assume drug testing programs serve as a deterrent and that employees are less likely to use illegal drugs due to fear of detection. Based on this assumption, are drug testing programs an example of a feedforward, concurrent, or feedback control mechanism?