Why is important to study Managing for Change?

What do you expect to learn?

WATCH THE VIDEO ---> Transcript of the video.

>> I think one of the things we've all gotten a little obsessed about at the moment around AI is what's technically possible. And I think we need to be paying much more attention to what's culturally, appropriately, socially acceptable and works inside our laws and governments.

>> So, you're focused on will robots share our values, not will robots take our jobs. Will they? Will they share our values?

>> Oh, another really good question, right? So, listen, we know that artificial intelligence is going to go to scale. We know it's going to end up in lots of different places. The question becomes, how do we ensure that that's something that we're comfortable with, something that we feel good about, something that reflects the things we care about. And that means asking questions beyond just what can we do technically, but to ask questions about what are the values we want these objects to enshrine, who gets to decide what those values are, and how do we regulate them.

>> Are these questions being asked as often as they should be?

>> Well, I'm an anthropologist so, you know, I think the answer is no. We should ask them all the time. At least the good news is I think they're starting to resurface. So, the more you hear talk about AI and ethics, AI and public policy, AI and governance, those are at least the beginnings of conversations about what's the world we want to build and how we're going to live in it.

>> So, let's take the pro side. Let's say these questions are asked as often as they should be. What is the potential of AI to affect our lives in positive ways?

>> So, I think if you manage to kind of think through the, where are the places that AI can be most useful, and frankly for me, again, as a social scientist, the question I always want to ask is not can we do it technically, but should we do it socially. So, are there places where AI makes better sense, not because it's about an efficiency, but because it either has a way of making decisions that's a little less messy than humans making it. By the same token, depending on who programs it, depending on what data they use, sometimes we have the potential of these technologies to reproduce and enshrine really longstanding in equities and bias. And that seems like not a good trend at all.

>> Right. So, what are the gravest dangers? What are the gravest dangers if these questions do not get asked?

>> I think the gravest dangers are we take the world that we live in now and we make it the world in perpetuity moving forward. So, all the things about the current world that don't feel right is what the data reflects, right? It's a world where women aren't paid as much as men, where certain kinds of populations are subject to more violence, where we know that certain decisions get made in manners that are profoundly unfair. If you take all the data about the way the world has been, and that's what you build the machinery on top of, then we get this world as our total future. And I don't know about you, but I'd like something slightly different

1. Imagine if, starting tomorrow, U.S. corporate hiring and promotion programs began using American-made AI software written by a young, white male who built subtle stereotypes against minorities, women, and older workers into the algorithms. What types of hiring and promotion conditions would these different populations expect to face? Would the changes in the hiring and promotion practices be a planned change or an unplanned change?
2. Continuing from the first question, would the hiring and promotion situation eventually become an internal force for organizational change? If so, how?
3. If the bias in the AI hiring and promotion algorithm is discovered, analyzed, and set to be corrected. Which type of employee would be likely to have a reactance – a negative reaction – about the subject? Of the eight reasons people resist change listed in the text, which would be the most likely reason these employees would have a negative reaction?

At one time or another, almost every retailer claims that their first and only priority is to make the customer happy. Few, however, can duplicate what Nordstrom does. For the Seattle-based upscale retailer, “the customer is always right” is not just a promotional motto but a way of life that guides the organization. The entire company is directed towards one goal––catering to the needs of customers. Sales associates are given incredible freedom to do whatever is needed to make customers happy––refunding a purchase made years ago, personally delivering items to airports and hotels for busy customers, and even lending out jewelry for a customer who is attending a party. The importance of making a customer happy even extends into store inventory, as managers try to stock every conceivable size, color, and variant of an item so that customers will always find what they are looking for. And in the rare instance that they can’t, employees will call other Nordstrom stores, or even competitor stores, to track it down.

This emphasis on customer service has even spawned an urban legend. The story goes that many years ago, a man walked into a Nordstrom store in Alaska (or Seattle) with two snow tires. Nordstrom, of course, doesn’t sell tires (snow or otherwise); the man had bought them from a tire store that had recently closed, the site of which was taken over by Nordstrom. Nonetheless, the man took the tires to a counter, said that he was unhappy with them, and asked for a full refund. The sales associate, eager to please the customer, gave it to him.

As the HR team of Nordstrom, you face a particular challenge––you need to create a team that is not only skilled for the job, but also has the personality, attitude, and motivation to provide consistent, superior customer service. Form a group with three or four other students and discuss how you would approach staffing and training issues at Nordstrom by answering the following questions.

1. Can a friendly, customer-oriented attitude be developed in a person? Can Nordstrom “train” employees to prioritize making customers happy, or is it purely a matter of personality? Which training methods would you feel are most helpful? What would be there benefits?

2. What kind of selection tools from the ones you have learned would you use to find people who would fit Nordstrom’s culture of customer service? Why would they be beneficial?

3. What kind of training programs would help new employees learn what is expected of them at Nordstrom?

• Describe the value in creating stakeholder dialogue and networks.

what is the role of power in sexual harassment? What should leaders do when sexual harassment is alleged? What is your opinion of the situation cited in this case? Do some online research and see if the case has been resolved?

1. Draw an exposure diagram to illustrate a firm’s exposure to interest rate risk if the firm is going to borrow $10m six months from today. Assume the loan will be a one-year loan with all interest paid at the end of the year. Graph the relation between the firms interest costs and interest rates. Also graph the relation between the firm’s profit and interest rates (assuming that higher interest costs cannot be passed on the consumers).

2.Draw an exposure diagram to illustrate the relationship between a firm’s costs and the exchange rate between US dollar and Euro dollar if the fir plans to purchase goods from an European firm one year from today. Assume that the transaction is denominated in Euro dollar, but that the firm is concerned about its costs in US dollars. Also draw an exposure diagram to illustrate the relationship between a firm’s profit and the exchange rate between US dollar and Euro dollar.

3. Draw an exposure diagram to illustrate the relationship between a gold mining firm’s profit and the price of gold in three months.

4. Would a call option or a put option hedge the exposure of the firms described in problem 1,2 and 3?

5. Would a long (buy) or a short (sell) forward position hedge the exposure of the firms described in problem 1,2 and 3?

1.What is the relation between Leader-Member Exchange and diverse team turnover/performance?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a district court ruling requiring marketers of the “Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet” to give up almost $16 million in net profits as part of a maximum $87 million they must pay in refunds to consumers. In a decision issued on January 3 and written by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, the court concluded, “The magistrate judge did not commit a clear error, or abuse his discretion, in concluding that the defendants set out to bilk unsophisticated persons who found themselves in pain from arthritis and other chronic conditions.” The court found that the defendants’ claims about how their product worked, for example, through “ionization” or “enhancing the flow of bio-energy” were “blather.” Judge Easterbrook wrote, “Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.” The FTC filed its case in May 2003, alleging that QT Inc., Q-Ray Company, and Bio-Metal, Inc., located in Illinois, and their owner, Que Te Park, also known as Andrew Q. Park, made false and misleading advertising claims that the Q-Ray bracelet provided immediate and significant pain relief and deceptively advertised their refund policy, in violation of Sections 5 and 12 of the FTC Act. In September 2006, the federal district court in Chicago found in favor of the FTC. In November 2006, the court required the defendants to turn over a minimum of $22.5 million in net profits and up to $87 million in refunds to consumers who bought the bracelets between January 1, 2000 and June 30, 2003, when the bracelet was advertised on infomercials and Internet Web sites, and at trade shows. The district court later reduced the minimum disgorgement amount to $15.9 million, which the appellate court has upheld. The appellate court rejected the defendants’ argument that the magistrate judge had held the defendants to too high a standard of proof for their purported therapeutic claims about the bracelet and found that the claims must be based on science. The court found that “proof is what separates an effect new to science from a swindle” and that the defendants “have no proof,” stating that the “tests” the defendants relied on were “bunk.” The court also rejected the defendants’ contention that testimonials could support their claims -- the defendants could not show that the testimonials would not have enjoyed the same pain relief even if they had not worn the bracelet. “That’s why the ‘testimonial’ of someone who keeps elephants off the streets of a large city by snapping his fingers is the basis of a joke rather than proof of cause and effect,” stated the court. The appellate court also rejected the defendants’ argument that because their bracelet conferred a benefit to consumers through its placebo effect, they were vindicated in making their false therapeutic claims. The court held that the Federal Trade Commission Act “lacks an exception for ‘beneficial deceit’.” The court noted, “Deceit such as the tall tales that defendants told about the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet will lead some consumers to avoid treatments that cost less and do more . . .”. The court also found that the defendants deceived consumers who purchased online and received only a 10-day return period when the infomercials promised a 30-day refund and suggested that consumers purchase online. “The disclosure of this shorter period was buried several clicks away on the website” and did not ameliorate the infomercial time frame upon which “reasonable consumers” could rely, the court stated. The Q-Ray defendants are currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

1. Are not such claims as those at the center of this case so transparent that there is no need for a government agency or court to intervene?

2. Does not the marketplace effectively wee out such frauds?

3. Assume that the defendant had actually conducted scientific studies, which had proved inconclusive. How might the judge have ruled in that situation?

How are contingent work arrangements related to artisan-based work?

What are “competing constraints”? Illustrate any SIX (6) occasions where the Pak Elektron Limited (PEL) management was dealing with these competing constraints and/or making trade-offs in the implementation of the new ERP system.

Kelly-Lambing, Inc., a builder of government contracted small ships, has a steady workforce of 10 very skilled craftspeople. These workers can supply 2,500 labor-hours each per year. Kelly-Lambing is about to undertake a new contract, building a new style of boat. The first boat is expected to take 6,200 hours to complete. The firm thinks that 75% is the expected learning rate. What is the firm's "capacity" to make these boats-that is, how many units can the firm make in 1 year? If the operations manager can increase the learning rate to 70% instead of 75 %, how many units can the firm make? (Round all numerical responses in this exercise to the nearest whole number.)

Number of Boats @ Total time 75% and 70%

4

5

6

7

8

1) Consider two products A and B that have identical cost, retail price and demand parameters and the same short selling season (the summer months from May through August). The newsvendor model is used to manage inventory for both products. Product A is to be discontinued at the end of the season this year, and the leftovers will be salvaged at 75% of the cost. Product B will be re-offered next summer, so any leftovers this year can be carried over to the next year while incurring a holding cost on each unit left over equal to 20% of the product's cost. How do the stocking quantities for these products compare?  

a) Stocking quantity of product A is higher. b) Stocking quantity of product B is higher. c) Stocking quantities are equal. d) The answer cannot be determined from the data provided.

2) Customers arrive at a mountain bike rental store in Moab, Utah, between 10 am and 12 pm at a rate of 12 customers per hour. From 12pm to 6pm, the arrival rate is at 6 customers per hour. The average time it takes a staff person of the bike rental store to help a customer get set on the bike, charge their credit card, and chat about the dangers of local riding is 50 minutes and the coefficients of variation for both the inter-arrival time and the service time is equal to one. All customers patiently wait until they are served. Assume that 8 staff members are working in the rental store throughout the day.

How much idle time, on average, will a staff member have from 10 am and 12 pm?
a. 0 mins b. 5 mins c. 10 mins d. 15 min e. 20 mins f. None of the above


3) A recent article on GM said that the company had a target of 91 days of supply of cars. When viewed thru the lens of Little’s Law, this statement is staying
a. T = 91 b. 1/T = 91 c. R = 91 d. I = 91

4) If a process is demand constrained, then adding capacity to the bottleneck is likely to have the following impact:
a. the flow rate will increase

b. utilization of the bottleneck will increase

c. both inventory turns and days of supply will increase

d. all of the above e. none of the above

5) A construction company has signed a contract to build an office tower. The contract stipulates that the project will be completed in 1500 days from today and also includes a penalty on the construction company of $30,000 per day if the project is late. In addition, the construction company estimates that its internal cost is $60,000 for each day the project is late. However, completing the project early is costly to the firm as well: each day the project is early costs the firm $45,000. (This includes the opportunity cost of capital and idle capacity.) The firm estimates the project’s completion time is Normally distributed with a mean of 1400 days and a standard deviation of 60 days.  
Given this data, how many days should the firm wait to begin construction?

Choose the closest answer.
a. 0 days, they should start immediately

b. 50 days c. 75 days

d. 100 days

e. 125 days


6) In the National Cranberry Case, the trucks were forced to wait due to which of the following factors (circle all that are correct)
a. The dryer was the bottleneck

b. The holding bins had limited capacity

c. The dry berries had to wait behind the wet berries on trucks.

d. The destining machine was a full capacity

e. There was uncertainty in the arrival process.

7) In the Virginia Mason Medical Center case, the practices of Lean Manufacturing allowed for the following changes to take place within the hospital


a) Computer automation of processes

b) Standardization of process

c) Elimination of non-value added activities

d) Removal of all inventory within the hospital

e) Involvement of all employees in the waste elimination process

Discuss the difference between deontological ethical theories and consequentialist ethical theories? How would a deontological theorist differ from a consequentialist theorist when considering the moral status of abortion? What would be relevant to each?

Remark:

800 words or as much words as u can give...Thank you so much for your kind attention and assistant

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Discussion-

Discuss the activities your company has undertaken to create an established level of ethics, or in the absence of an ethical statement, the activities you would recommend your company to take.