Case Study

ABC Company observes that the confidentiality of their workers is compromised while using the eservices provided by the partner company. Further investigation has highlighted that whenever a user uses their unified profiles to access the partner’s company services from the relevant mobile application, their confidentiality is compromised and data theft patterns are observed. The situation is alarming and makes them focus on how the mobile application that gives access to partner’s eservices are vulnerable. Further investigation is done in this regard and it is found out that whenever a user sends a request to use any of the partner company’s eservice, only at that instance the confidentiality is being compromised. This may mean that the gateway at either one of the party’s end has already been compromised. Further investigation highlights that the cause is not the gateway but the common reusable APIs used in their mobile application. It is also noted that the same mobile application is working fine for the internal accessible services but start malfunctioning when partner company’s eservices are accessed. A team of researchers is hired to establish a framework of utilizing the known reusable component for unified service consumption from multiple sources considering the security dynamics of ABC country.

A : Identify the problem area from the above Case study description and elaborate how this problem area can be resolved using the current world technical solutions or tools.​​

​B: ​Highlight the titles of SIX (6) possible generic research design phases applied for any research.​
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​-Mention which of these highlighted phases are applicable in this case.
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​-Also highlight whether the research methodology be quantitative or qualitative in this case.

Fact Scenario:

                   Quik Results, Inc.(QRI), a Michigan corporation, makes and sells Power Up!, a super energy boosting, carbonated beverage. Power Up! is made in Michigan, but shipped to stores all across the Midwest and East Coast. Power Up! is made by QRI, and delivered on QRI. trucks, by QRI employees. QRI has in-house accounting and marketing staff.

                  Quicksilver Delivery Service contracts to deliver Power Up! in California for $5,000, payable in advance. QRI pays the money, but Quicksilver fails to perform. Can QRI rescind the contract? Can QRI also obtain restitution? What does it mean to "rescind" a contract? How is a contract rescinded? What is restitution? How is restitution accomplished? Explain.

Support activities assist companies in performing their primary activities including infrastructure, HRM, technology development, and procurement. Explain each of activity in your own words. (Xiaomi corporation)

Janna wants to get a better grasp of her market segment by researching such demographics as income, gender, age, and education. She plans to use online surveys designed to find out the groups’ current and future behaviour. Janna is conducting what type of research?

Select one:

causal

situational

basic

descriptive

exploratory

Joe used to work in the investment industry and he recently established his own company that develops Web sites for investment professionals. His clients are willing to pay a higher fee than many competing similar services for his expertise, reliability, and on-time delivery. These clients are acting upon ________________.

Select one:

customer-perceived value

social relationships

customer loyalty

relationship management

customer equity

Which of the following is not part of the micro-environment for a public telephone company?

Select one:

marketing intermediaries

cultural forces

internal functions such as accounting and R&D

suppliers

customers

Is it more important to speak well, or to listen well?

Explain why, and include at two strategies or examples to support your response

Using the seven primary characteristics that capture an organization’s culture, list each and what you see Macomb Community College doing in each from a student view, to create the organization’s culture. Please be sure to give examples. and these the characteristics.

1- Innovation and risk taking, 2- Attention to detail, 3- Outcome orientation, 4- People orientation, 5- Team orientation, 6- Aggressiveness, 7- Stability,

Read the Case Study below and answer the questions that follow

Microsoft Xbox 360

When Microsoft rushed its video game console, Xbox, to market in November 2005 it had a one-year advantage over Sony and Nintendo. By 2007 they had sold over 11.6 million units at prices between $279 and $479 … depending on the configuration.

Unresolved issues plagued the project from the beginning. When Journalists and reviewers were invited to try the game in 2005, before it became available on store shelves, they encountered problems when connecting it to the internet (N’Gai, 2007). Shortly after the game was introduced to the public, users complained that the console damaged game disks and that these disks could no longer be used (Cliff, 2007). In 2005 Microsoft recalled the power cords concerned that they posed a fire hazard (Wolverton and Takanashi, 2007). Then in December 2006, in an apparent response to these and other issues, Microsoft extended the warranty from 90 days to one year.

But problems persisted. Blogs and forums complained about the “Red Ring of Death” referring to a string of three lights that illuminate on the console when a serious problem is detected. One survey found that the return rate was 33 percent (Cliff, E, 2007)

Then in July 2007, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Device Division, said that “In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for

our liking” (Associated Press, 2007) (Mintz, 2007). Shortly thereafter, Microsoft announced an extension of the warranty from one to three years at an expected cost of $1 billion. This represented about $100 for every Xbox sold since its introduction in 2005.

Later in the same month Microsoft announced that its top gaming executive, Peter Moore, was leaving the company, but they denied that his departure was related to the Xbox’s engineering problems (Wingfield, 2007)).

Lessons Learned

Perhaps the dominant lesson here is the trap called “conservatism” in which new data is largely ignored to protect the status quo. Here, in the face of a continuous stream of product returns and customer complaints, those who were responsible for the project were unwilling to acknowledge that the problem was serious; that customer satisfaction and loyalty was deteriorating rapidly; that the product needed to be redesigned; and that customer satisfaction needed to be addressed.

The sunk cost trap also played its part. In the sunk cost trap, a course of action is not abandoned because considerable time or money has already been spent on the project, and those in charge are reluctant to abandon the project or take steps to delay the project in any way. For the Xbox, considerable investment in the product had already been made, sales were strong, and since the division had yet to turn a profit, there was pressure to continue at any cost. Returning to earlier stages of design, issuing a recall for the defective units, and replacing them with new units was apparently not a realistic option.

Question 1

1. Identify the problems that Microsoft encountered when it launched its Xbox 360 console.

1.2. “For the Xbox, considerable investment in the product had already been made, sales were strong, and since the division had yet to turn a profit, there was pressure to continue at any cost. Returning to earlier stages of design, issuing a recall for the defective units, and replacing them with new units was apparently not a realistic option.”

It is clear that Microsoft had to deliver the project on schedule; hence they could not recall the defective units. Identify and briefly explain the theory that relates to extract above.

1.3. Successful completion of a project requires finishing the scope of work within budget and a certain time frame whilst managing resource utilization, meeting quality expectations and managing risks. All this must be done while assuring customer satisfaction. Discuss how Microsoft could have managed project constraints to successfully deliver the Xbox 360 project.

scenario analysis is the most commonly used technique for analysing risk.By citing a project that you are famillar with, undertake risk assessment of at least 10 identified risks using the table provided by lersan and gray (2017).

Describe the various types of time-series and associative forecasting models. Which types of organizations are each of these most applicable to and why?

Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:

• Discuss the CAGE Distance Framework that firms should consider when choosing which foreign markets to enter.
• What conditions help managers determine which type of distance is most likely to affect the success of an international expansion? Provide an example.

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE AN ANSWER THAT IS ALREADY ON CHEGG..

Digital Eye must design an assembly line to produce a new line of slim digital cameras. Assembling a single camera requires the completion of nine distinct tasks, and information about each of these tasks is provided below:

This assembly line will operate 8 hours a day to produce 600 digital cameras daily. Digital Eye will use the Longest Processing Time Rule (LPT) to create the design.  Please draw the precedence diagram and show me your line balancing steps!!

1.1 What is the cycle time of Digital Eye’s assembly line, in seconds?

1.2. How many workstations are required by this design and what tasks will be done at which workstations?

1.3 Which workstation enjoys the maximum idle time? How efficient is this design?

1.4 How does the actual number of workstations required by this design compare to its theoretical minimum number of workstations?

Read “The Global Cost of Electronic Waste” and discuss the dark side of technology from e-waste to the loss of jobs. Identify and expand on one issue that you found most troubling.

Case:

How Bad Performance Management Killed Microsoft’s Edge What went wrong? Microsoft has been crippled by a management system known as “stack ranking.” Like the hated bell curve of your high school memory, this program forced each business area to rank a certain percentage of employees as top, good, average, or poor performers. That means that even if your department was full of stars, a certain quota would be getting bad reviews—no matter how hard they worked. Pretty demoralizing. Here is a quote from the preview of the article that’s now available online: “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.” This sort of cannibalistic performance management practice—with its rigid, stratified winner’s circle—completely disengaged many workers at the company, and led to a culture that did not encourage cooperation or teamwork. Innovation and excellence fell victim to the need to compete with co-workers for not only recognition but survival. Said one former employee: “It was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers.” Microsoft, once the uncontested king of the tech industry, has faltered while companies like Facebook, Apple and Google have excelled. Where Microsoft had a head start on technologies like smart phones, social networking and e-reader tablets, in every case the company’s culture, which penalized risk-taking, caused them to fail. Good talent management is not divisive; it is inclusive. It takes into account the viewpoints of peers; it doesn’t pit you against peers. It is flexible and immediate and responsive to the needs of management and the needs of workers. It works in tandem with the culture you want to encourage; it does not set up a new, toxic culture. The surest way to kill your company is to ignore these principles. Answer the following questions:

Q1. Identify the performance measurement system adopted in the Microsoft company and analyze its negative impact on employee morale, creativity and work-outcomes.

Q2. Identify and explain the key stages of the performance management cycle in which Microsoft company made errors in designing an effective performance management system. Give examples  

Q3. In your opinion, is the performance management system at Microsoft ethical? Can it create legal issues for the company?  

Q4. Plan and propose a new performance management system for Microsoft company capable of motivating the employees, taking into consideration all the stages of PMS development.