Scenario: Sam Smith was standing on a platform of B&O Railroad after buying a ticket to go to San Antonio Beach. A train stopped at the station, bound for another place. Two women ran forward to catch it. One of the women reached the platform of the car without incident, though the train was already moving. The other woman, carrying a package, jumped aboard the car but seemed unsteady as if about to fall. One of the guards on the car, who had held the door open, reached forward to help her in, and another guard on the platform pushed her from behind. In this act, the package was let go and fell onto the rails. The package was not big, and was within a plastic bag. The package, later, was determined to have fireworks within it. The fireworks when they fell exploded. The shock of the explosion threw down some scales at the other end of the platform, many feet away. The scales struck the plaintiff, causing injuries for which Sam Smith is suing.

• Identify the type of tort or crime to be charged
• If a tort, examine the elements needed to meet this tort and if all elements were met.
• Evaluate and Recommend which parties should be held liable for the injuries suffered, if anyone?

Starbucks does have optimistic status for their great company culture. Do you believe customers can sense a difference between company owned stores and franchisee/licensee institutions? That would not be great for business as whole, particularly when that culture has some impact on selling $5+ lattes.

Find an example in your own experience of a communication-related challenge stemming from the difference between high and low context in culture. Identify any potential misunderstanding or difficulty that you may have observed in interpreting an individual’s intended meaning. For example, if someone from a different culture seems too direct (low context), the exchange can seem, incorrectly, to imply a harsh tone, while being too indirect (high context) can seem, incorrectly, to reflect fear or hesitation. Try to reason how some knowledge of high versus low context in different cultures might have helped avoid any confusion. [Week 4 Video 2.] Consider the various cultural dimensions under the broad heading of proxemics, including proxemics itself (physical distance), oculesics (eye contact, such as length of gaze), vocalics (use of voice, such as inflection or loudness), chronemics (time-sequencing in conversation), kinesics (body language), or haptics (physical touch as a part of regular communication). Identify an example from your own experience in which one or more of these dimensions was at play in creating some manner of confusion in interpreting someone’s intent. For example, ample misunderstandings can result from failing to understand hand-holding between men in certain cultures, touching the other person’s arm during a normal conversation, or appearing to gaze a bit too long due to different cultural norms. Please use at least 2 references and in text citation.

Identify a product that would fit in each of the following stages of the product life cycle. 1) introduction, 2) Growth, 3) maturity, 4) decline.

Please write in paragraph form. Thank you for the help1

You are in charge of leading a meeting for the newest changes for the HEB you work at. The changes needing to be discussed are:

- The new soap dispensers for hands free washing,
- Changing the benefits and pay structures,
- The purchasing of 500 new carts, and
- Employee birthdays that month.

With your knowledge of conducting effective meetings a) generate an appropriate agenda for this meeting, explain why you chose this layout for topics, and describe how you would use your “Closing and Follow up” notes

Discuss three of the ten S-D logic premises with relevant examples of how each is applied in practice.

1. Service is the fundamental basis of exchange
2. Indirect exchange masks the fundamental basis of exchange
3. Goods are a distribution mechanism for service provision
4. Operant (vs Operational) resources are the fundamental source of competitive advantage
5. All economies are service economies

6. The customer is always a co creator of value
7. The enterprise cannot deliver value, but only offer value propositions
8. A service-centred view is inherently customer oriented and relational
9. All social and economic actors are resource integrators
10. Value is always uniquely determined by the beneficiary

Asha is travelling to rural Texas to speak with shipping managers of a new bar-coding system to track contents for deliveries. She will be speaking to managers who will then share the information with staff, and then she will move to the next shipping building. Asha is nervous and calls superior, you, and asks how she can help ensure her message is effective and taken positively.

Consider what you know about AIM analysis; provide insight on things Asha needs to consider when developing her message. Answers should be broken down as follows:

a) Suggestions on starting with “A”
b) How she can be effective with “I”
c) And considerations for “M”.
d) Finally, after your AIM analysis, explain which section you feel is the MOST SIGNIFICANT part of AIM (minimum three-sentence explanation).

Compare and contrast the current trends within OD. the subject is Trends in the Context Organization Development.

Discuss the limitations / critiques against S-D logic and their relevance in today’s markets. Do you think S-D logic can be universally applied to today’s markets? Why or Why not?

What experience have you had with the legal system? Do not wish to infringe on anyone’s privacy. Did you hire a lawyer? What would your recommendations to others be, based on your experience?

Please Use your keyboard (Don't use handwriting)

ECOM201

I need new and unique answers, please. (Use your own words, don't copy and paste)

Virtual Team Successes and Stresses

A Case Study

8/8/2016

As widespread as diverse and dispersed teaming is these days, leading a virtual team can be a challenge. This case study offers ideas on making the best of diverse and dispersed team structures.

Virtual teaming, that is, working on teams whose members are not present in the same location, is a fact of our modern, globalized business world. Virtual (or diverse and dispersed) teams are prevalent not only in multinational companies with offices in different countries, but also in academic and non-governmental institutions with bases across the world. In such team structures, members often have to communicate and collaborate with others who could be thousands of miles and many time zones apart.

As widespread as diverse and dispersed teaming is these days, leading a virtual team can be a challenge. Team leaders need to not only account for practical matters such as scheduling across time zones, but also technical issues such as varying rates of connectivity and access to communication platforms. However, one of the biggest factors in creating successful collaboration among diverse and dispersed teams is culture – specifically, tailoring the team’s mission, plans and procedures to the preferences of the different cultures represented on the team.

The following is a case study provided by a Cultural Navigator subject matter expert in diverse and dispersed teaming:

“A virtual team leader named Rebecca, originally from the United States, recently led a virtual project team with members from Japan, Mexico, Germany, Korea and the US. Rebecca was focused on setting the team up for success, and although she deliberately used strategies and tools made available by her company, she learned some valuable lessons along the way.

“Before initiating the project with a kick-off meeting, Rebecca made sure that everyone filled out their Cultural Orientations Indicator (COI) assessment to get to know their own work-style preferences. She then invited all members into a team message board on the Cultural Navigator, and encouraged them to share their profiles to better understand each other’s work-style preferences.

“The team was not able to have a face-to-face kick-off meeting, so during their first virtual meeting, every team member took time to introduce him or herself. The members talked about the different preferences in their team using the non-judgmental vocabulary of the Cultural Orientations Approach. At the end of the call, the team agreed on some ground rules for their upcoming teleconference and then closed the call.

“As the project continued, the team leader noticed that key team members were regularly not sharing their sales pipelines during their calls as agreed upon. Rebecca used humor during their sessions to lighten the mood, thinking some of the team members were nervous. However, she noticed the same people began to skip the calls, and were reluctant to speak when they were in attendance.”

In the above case study, the team leader Rebecca had done her due diligence in preparing the team to accommodate different cultural preferences among its members. But then she hit a snag. What had she done wrong?

The subject matter expert offered this reading of the situation: “In retrospect, Rebecca realized that even though she had set ground rules, she could have had an individual talk with each member before finalizing the team structure and processes. Perhaps in those discussions she would have understood that Woo-jin, her Korean colleague, worked in a strict hierarchical office environment and had to clear most decisions with his direct supervisor before sending anything to her. Woo-jin had hoped his team leader realized he did not have this approval, however Rebecca was not aware of this.

Similarly, the Japanese team member named Kamiko was concerned about the strict data protection laws in Japan, so she did not feel comfortable sharing her sales pipeline information. Kamiko had tried to indirectly convey this limitation to Rebecca, who wasn’t able to understand this message.

As for Rebecca’s use of humor during teleconferences, she did not realize how many cultural references she was using in her jokes, which her colleagues from outside her own culture had little understanding of.”

In essence, while Rebecca began the team’s collaboration with most of the components necessary for success, throughout the project duration, she learned the hard way that cultural mishaps often stall even the best plan.

While cultural due diligence and careful preparation are necessary components of working with a virtual team, the team leader and members need to exercise cultural awareness and cultural competence all along the way.

Though there can be challenges to working in diverse and dispersed teams, they are a fact of modern work life. The good news is that, when managed well, virtual teams can be as effective and productive as their traditional equivalents.

Questions:

1. What did the team leader notice during the team meeting (calls) and what did she tried to do to enhance the situation?
2. What should Rebeca had to do for each virtual worker and why?
3. What were the special situations with the Korean and the Japanese workers?
4. What the virtual leaders and the virtual members need to exercise?
5. How can the virtual teams be as effective and productive as their traditional equivalents?

Price dispersion is measured as the distribution of prices for the same product/service across sellers at a given point in time.

Lower dispersion means that prices across sellers at a point in time are more similar to each other, i.e., there is less variability in pricing. Price dispersion is thought to be a good measure of information efficiency in a market. For example, when search costs for consumers are low (and consumers can easily compare competitive offers), price dispersion is expected to be lower (i.e., prices of identical/similar products should not vary much across retailers).

For this reason, common wisdom suggests that price dispersion should be lower on the Internet than for offline retailers. One implication of lower price dispersion is that competition among retailers would be more intense online than offline.

Do you agree with the “common wisdom” view that the Internet generates lower price dispersion (and hence, more intense retail competition)? Why – or why not?

Please find an emerging mobile app and analyze the app according to the following requirements. The app you group chooses to analyze must be published in the app market after January 1, 2020. If an app was published before January 1, 2020, but was updated after this date, you should not choose the app for analysis. For example, YouTube app was published in early 2010, and had a newer version after January 1, 2020. Then, you should not choose YouTube for analysis, because a version update is not considered emerging. The main purpose of this project is to discover an emerging app with potentials instead of analyzing an established app like YouTube, Facebook, etc.

In your analysis, please answer the following questions:

(a) The name, functions, and latest number of downloads of the app;

(b) The reason you choose this app. In other word, why you thinks this app is important;

(c) The strengths of this app, and why users like this app;

(d) The weaknesses of this app, and how you plan to improve it if you were the app manager;

(e) Excluding figures, data tables, and references, a minimum of 2 page analyses are required.

The nine (9) major organizing concepts and their influence on decisions are critical to understanding the dynamics of your organization. Think of a current situation in your organization and describe how each principle influences the organizational behavior

Executives must consider the benefits and risks of competing internationally when making decisions about whether to expand overseas. Executives also need to determine the likelihood that their companies will succeed when they compete in international markets by examining demand conditions, factor conditions, related and supporting industries, and strategy, structure, and rivalry among its domestic competitors.

For these executives that may face many uncertainties in a global marketplace, assess the three possible risks that may be faced by decision-makes seeking to expand in global markets. Analyze all three risks listed below. In your own words, analyze what conditions may be present in a country that would cause concern for these decision-makers. Explain what political risks may be present. Describe the economic and cultural risks that may also be present. You do not need to select a country. Your responses to all three risks can be a general overview of potential problems that executives want to review and assess the potential negative impacts.

Political risk refers to the potential for government upheaval or interference with business to harm an operation within a country.

• In extreme cases, a company’s assets in a country are seized by the national government. This process is called nationalization.

Economic risk refers to the potential for a country’s economic conditions and policies, property rights protections, and currency exchange rates to harm a company’s operations within a country.

Cultural risk refers to the potential for a company’s operations in a country to struggle due to differences in language, customs, norms, and customer preferences.

Your response should be around 150 to 200 words.