Identify and summarize a high profile case regarding employment discrimination and social media. Was the decision fair or not?

With reference to the CSR pyramid, what are the implications of stopping at a particular pyramid level? For example, would it be all right if a company took its sole responsibility to be financial responsibility to its shareholders? Financial responsibility and legal responsibility? Do you agree that CSR is best represented by a pyramid? Why or why not? Can you think of a better way to graphically represent a company’s social responsibility?

Describe how you would adopt a balanced score card approach to evaluate your project performance. Your response should identify specific measures you would use as well as the approach you would take to obtain the measures you identify.

Case Three   Change Management   

As a Human Resources Business Partner, you have been asked by a Production Manager to help her create a change management plan. The change that will be implemented with involve modifying a work process that has been in place for over ten years and that front-line team members have become extremely accustomed to…but just isn’t efficient anymore. The Production Manager is concerned about resistance and the lack of adoption by the team members if the change is not rolled out “correctly”.

Question:

• Outline five strategies that should be employed, with examples, that will help minimize resistance to the change and enhance adoption of the new process.

Case Four   Conflict Management

You have recently been promoted to a Manager that looks after two different teams of direct reports. The outgoing manager provided you with some insights about the various team members of both teams and made a point to mention that both teams work very differently from each other.

Specifically, Team A members were constantly sniping and undermining each other at both team meetings and in one on one interactions. The results that Team A produced were less than stellar.

However, Team B, which definitely disagreed with each other and had differing opinions and perspectives tended to get along well and generally produced superior work.

Question:

1. Briefly explain the difference between process and relationship conflict.
2. Explain three possible underlying reasons why Team B may be experiencing relationship conflict and thee actions that the manager could take to help minimize relationship conflict as well as promote process conflict with Team B.

Marketing Plan

From the real international market, select a company of your choice wishing to start its activities in Saudi Arabia. The Company hired you as Marketing Manager of Saudi Arabian Region.

You have to establish a marketing department starting from the Analysis of the market, formulate overall marketing goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics within the context of an organization's business, mission, and goals designing and planning the entire function.

Write a Marketing Plan considering the following points (2x5=10 Marks)

1. Introduction, Goals and Objectives

To introduce this section you should include the "mission statement" of the business; an idea of what its goals are for customers, clients, employees and the consumer.

1. Introduction about the business.
2. Business vision and mission
3. Business objective.
4. Products and services offered

2. Environmental Analysis

Conduct an environmental analysis that looks at and comments on your local area and your network of business contacts, competitors and customers.

3. Target Market Analysis

Identify the target market, describing how the company will meet the needs of the consumer better than the competition does.

4. SWOT Analysis

Conduct a SWOT analysis for your chosen company based on your research.

Strengths: List the strengths of the business approach;

Weaknesses: Describe the areas of weakness in the company's operations;

Opportunities: Examine factors that may improve the business's chances of success;

Threats: List the external threats to the business' success.

5. Marketing Mix (4 P’s ) Analysis

Describe each of the 4Ps of your chosen company.

Product or Service

Identify the product or service by what it is, who will buy it, how much they will pay for it and how much it will cost for the company to produce it, why a consumer demand exists for your product, and where the product sits in comparison to similar products/services now available.

Place

Identify the location of the business, why it is located there (strategic, competitive, economic objectives), the expected methods of distribution, and timing objectives.

Promotion

Describe the type of promotional methods that will be used. Identify techniques such as word of mouth, personal selling, direct marketing, sales promotion etc. television, radio, social media and newspaper ads.

Price

The prices of the products or services that reflects the overall company strategy. Should be competitive as well as a reflection of the quality, costs and profit margin.

Choose two countries Apple company operates and compare/analyze their political environment (political systems, political freedom, press freedom, political risks, and their implications). Does Apple company primarily operate in civil law or common law countries? What are some of the implications of this?

A note on credible sources:

Credible sources are those whose reputation is widely respected and verifiable, such as McShane, Canadian Organizational Behaviour.

Case Eight   Organizational Culture

As a senior management consultant, you’ve been asked to make recommendations on how to change the organizational culture of Carfrae Filters. Carfrae Filters has had one President at the helm for more than thirty years. There is a senior executive group, including a Director of Human Resources. Supervisors, line managers and various office and production workers manufacture filters and related products.

Over the thirty years the President has had a very authoritative and hierarchal method of management and his bad temper is legendary. While it would be expected that decisions would come from the knowledge and experience provided by the executive group – the President has consistently made unilateral decisions, including those concerning hiring and firing. Lately the company is not doing as well as it had, due to increased competition and increased cost of production, and the President is making changes and firing people for no apparent reason.

As a result, there is a culture of fear. A negative reputation is forming about the organization on various company and job rating sites. Each functional group within the organization responds differently to the fear, for example: the people on the manufacturing line don’t understand why they have a new supervisor every six months, and several have begun calling in sick. The senior executive worry about their job security. No one looks forward to going to work anymore, and it is affecting the bottom line.

Questions:

• What steps would you recommend Carfrae Filters take to improve the culture of their organization under the current President’s leadership?

What steps would you recommend Carfrae Filters take to improve the culture of their organization once the current President decides to retire.  

Case Five   Leadership

In your role of Vice-President of Human Resources at ABC Inc., you have recently joined an organization that requires rapid change to compete in the marketplace.  You have heard the senior management team comment that your firm requires a strong leader to transform your culture.  

Question:

• You have been asked to prepare a five–point report to improve the understanding of transformational leadership (including a definition of leadership in general) and why it may benefit your organization.

Case Six   Power/Influence   

You have just been hired as the project manager on a major project that is critical to the company’s success.  Eight people from different functional specialties have been assigned to your project team.  About forty percent of their time will be devoted to the project.  They take their direction from you with respect to the project but are not under your direct authority as they continue to do other work and continue to report to their current manager.  

Question:

• Describe the sources of power you can use to ensure that the project deliverables are completed on-time and to the level of quality required.

Traditional marketing method of sending millions of customers the same advertisement is getting out of date as social media and mobile technologies enable us to communicate with each of the millions of customers and if necessary we can create one million different advertisements (I know, this is an extreme case but it really is possible to do this), customizing each advertisement to the individual consumer’s age, gender, lifestyle, culture, income level, etc. Pick any product or service and create two different advertisements involving retired people versus young single working females in your home country. Then create similarly two advertisements for a second country. Your student numbers last digit on the right will determine your second country. ( 1 China, 2 Korea, 3 Japan, 4 Italy, 5 Germany, 6 Sweden, 7 United Kingdom, 8 Brazil, 9 USA). Describe your advertisements in detail with at least 500 words for each, explaining why that advertisement will be liked by the target market audience in terms of its message and content.

A note on credible sources:

Credible sources are those whose reputation is widely respected and verifiable, such as McShane, Canadian Organizational Behaviour.

Case Seven   Equity                                                                                                           

In this case, we are dealing with the rumour of a potential union organizing drive in an organization that has been traditionally non-union.  You, the Management Consultant, has been hired to assist the organization with positioning itself to positively deal with this matter.

One of the key topics being argued is the notion that a union would provide Third Party Review of Management decision making through a mandatory Grievance/Arbitration process.   This is attractive to employees because it provides an element of fairness in the workplace.

Think about what you could advise the company to consider under these circumstances so that employees don’t feel a union is necessary and answer the following questions:

1. How would the notion of procedural justice assist in this endeavour?
2. How would you recommend this notion be implemented?
3. How would the notion of distributive justice assist in this endeavor?
4. How would you recommend this notion be implemented?

Discuss How have trends in channel leadership recently shifted?

1. How can we work with customers to increase customer satisfaction while making our organization more effective and efficient?

2. What tools (Example MFA, Market Feedback Analysis) can be used to measure customer value and how should these results be factored into the decision-making process?