can you give me short summary abstract and conclusion on the below which is taken from chapters 5,6 in Strategic Market Management, 9th Edition, by David A. Aaker

Environmental Analysis and Strategic Uncertainty

Environmental Analysis

• Technology Trends – To what extent are existing technologies maturing? – What technological developments or trends are affecting or could affect the industry? • Government/Economic Trends – What changes in regulation are possible? What will their impact be?   – What are the political risks of operating in governmental jurisdiction? – What are the economic prospects and inflation outlets for the countries in which the firm operates? How will they affect strategy?

Environmental Analysis

• Consumer Trends – What are the current or emerging trends in lifestyles, fashions, and other components of culture? Why? What are their implications, What demographic trends will affect the market size of the industry or its submarkets? What demographic trends represent opportunities or threats?

• Innovations – Transformational, changes what people buy,changes the assets and competencies needed ,– Substantial—significant change as in a new generation offering ,Incremental,makes the offering more attractive or less costly

Environmental Analysis

• Being Green : Motivation, Practical functional benefits to customers and firms, Attack global warming, Generate respect from customers/employees

• General External Analysis Questions – What are the significant trends and future events? – What threats and opportunities do you see? – What are the key areas of uncertainty as to trends or events that have the potential to impact strategy? • Evaluate these strategic uncertainties in terms of their impact and immediacy. • Scenarios – What strategic uncertainties are worth being the basis of a scenario analysis?

Scenario Analysis: Identify Scenarios, Relate Scenarios to Existing or Proposed Strategies ,Estimate Scenario Probabilities

Environmental analysis of changes in technology, demographics, culture, the economy, and governmental actions can detect opportunities or threats to an organization.

• The green movement provides opportunities to connect to customers and employees.

• Impact analysis involves assessing the impact and immediacy of the trends and events that underlie each strategy uncertainty.

• Scenario analysis, a vehicle to explore different assumptions about the future, involves the creation of two to three plausible scenarios, the development of strategies appropriate to each, the assessment of scenario probabilities, and the evaluation of the resulting strategies across the scenarios.

Internal Analysis

Financial Performance – Sales and Profitability

• Sales and Market Share • Profitability • Measuring Performance: Shareholder Value Analysis

Shareholder Value Analysis: Cost of equity—weighted average of cost of capital and cost of debt – e.g. Capital $1 billion (12%); Debt $3 billion (4%) then the cost of capital is 6%

• Each business aims at ROA to exceed cost of equity, so shareholder can improve stock investment

Shareholder Value Risks

• ROA estimate requires knowing the cash flow of any investment and the assets employed—could encourage short term results • Reducing assets employed by outsourcing could result in loss of control of business • Reducing investment could affect offering • Increasing debt to reduce cost of equity could be risky

Performance Measures Reflecting Long-Term Profitability: Customer Satisfaction/ Brand Loyalty, Relative Cost, Brand/Firm Associations, Product/Service Quality, New Product Activity, Manager/Employee Capability/Performance, Long Term Profits, Heritage and Values, Current Performance: Long Term Profits,

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strategies leverage strengths and neutralize weaknesses

• Point of advantage vs. points of parity vs. liability

Threats & Opportunities

• Key output of external analysis

• Evaluate as to: – Immediacy – Impact

Structuring Strategic Decisions

Strategy Decisions: Strategic Investment, Value Proposition, Assets and Competencies, Functional Strategies and Programs

Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses

Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses

Market Needs, Attractiveness, and Key Success Factors

Sales and profitability analysis provide an evaluation of past strategies and an indication of the current market viability of a product line.

• Shareholder value holds that the flow of profits emanating from an investment should exceed the cost of capital (which is the weighted average of the cost of equity and cost of debt). Routes to achieving shareholder value – such as downsizing, reducing assets employed, and outsourcing – can be risky when they undercut assets and competencies.

• Performance assessment should go beyond financials to include such dimensions as customer satisfaction/brand loyalty, product/service quality, brand/firm’s associations, relative cost, new product activity, and manager/employee capability and performance.

• Assets and competences can represent a point of advantage, a point of parity, or a liability. Threats and opportunities that are both imminent and important should trigger strategic imperatives, programs with high priority.

Week 3 In-Class Exercise C++

Payroll

Design a PayRoll class that is an abstract data type for payroll. It has data members for an employee’s hourly pay rate, number of hours worked, and total pay for the week.

Your class must include the following member functions:

• a constructor to set the hours and pay rate as arguments,

• a default constructor to set data members to 0,

• member functions to set each of the member variables to values given as an argument(s) to the function,

• member functions to retrieve the data from each of the member variables,

• an input function that reads the values of number of hours and hourly pay rate,

• an output function that outputs the value of all data members for an employee,

• void function to calculate the total pay for a week.

The input and output functions will each have one formal parameter for the stream.

Write a program with an array of seven PayRoll objects. The program should ask the user for the number of hours each employee has worked and will then display the amount of gross pay each has earned.

Input Validation: Do not accept values greater than 60 for the number of hours

worked.

Sample Output:

Enter the hours worked and pay rate for 7 employees:

Employee #1 pay rate: 15

Employee #1 hours worked: 40

Employee #2 pay rate: 20

Employee #2 hours worked: 35

Employee #3 pay rate: 18

Employee #3 hours worked: 40

Employee #4 pay rate: 22

Employee #4 hours worked: 38

Employee #5 pay rate: 15

Employee #5 hours worked: 40

Employee #6 pay rate: 20

Employee #6 hours worked: 32

Employee #7 pay rate: 22

Employee #7 hours worked: 40

Total pay:

Employee #1: 600.00

Employee #2: 700.00

Employee #3: 720.00

Employee #4: 836.00

Employee #5: 600.00

Employee #6: 640.00

Employee #7: 880.00

Press any key to continue . . .

Program Task (C++)

The program should contain an abstract data type (ADT) for an Employee, defined as follows:

struct Employee

int id; // unique employee identifier

string name; // employee’s full name

double rate; // employee’s hourly rate

double hours; // how many hours they worked since last pay

double taxable; // the current year’s taxable income };

This definition should appear above the main() function. The main() function should include:

1. Declare a single array to hold at most 50 employees a. Declare them locally - should not be in the global scope!

2. Call a function menu() to display the program’s menu and get a valid choice. The function takes no arguments and returns a valid integer. The function should use data validation to ensure the user’s choice is within the valid range. If not, it should display an error message, re-display the menu, and ask for another choice. The function only returns once a valid choice is entered.

Dining Center

----------------------------------

1. Enter new employee information

2. Add hours for an employee

3. Print paychecks

4. Exit the program

3. Create a loop that runs until the call to menu() returns the value 4 to exit the program. Then the loop will terminate, and the program will also stop. Use a switch statement to handle the user’s choices:

a. For choice 1 – call the addEmp() function to add a new employee at the next free element in the array. Before calling the function, ensure there is enough room in the array to store a new employee. If not, display an error message and do not call addEmp()!

b. For choice 2 – call the addHours() function to add hours for an employee

c. For choice 3 – call the printPaychecks() function to print all paychecks d. For choice 4 – exit the loop, terminate the program

4. Create an addEmp() function. This function has 2 arguments: the array of employees and the total number of employees currently in the array. This function should ask the user to enter in the employee details (only ask for id, name, and rate – the other 2 fields can be 0 initialized), create a new Employee and then add it to the next available location in the array. The code should validate the data – id should be unique (and positive) and rate should be greater than 0. Keep asking for data until a valid value is given

5. Create an addHours() function. This function has 2 arguments: the array of employees and the total number of employees currently in the array. The function will ask the user for an employee id, then call findEmp() to get the employee’s subscript. If the employee isn’t found it displays an error. If found, it will then ask for how many hours and update the record by adding those hours to the employee’s existing hours.

a. Print single table row like: “2674 Joe DeAngelo 45 $6100.00” which is the employee’s id, name, rate, and (rate * hours)

b. Update their taxable field, adding (rate * hours) to it

c. Set their hours back to 0

7. Create a findEmp() function. This function has 3 arguments: the target employee id, the array of employees, and the total number of employees currently in the array. The function returns -1 if an employee is not found. Otherwise it returns the subscript in the array that has an employee matching the search target id. The function should not display any output or errors.

Johnson & Johnson and Crisis Management: Comparison of Two Leaders in Two Crises

Abstract

Crisis management communications is a critical skill for corporate leaders. Failure during crisis management may result in serious harm to the company and in some cases can lead to the exit of the firm from the industry. Successful crisis management may result in little or no damage to a company’s reputation in the industry. This case study will review the crisis management communication strategies of two CEOs at different times in a single company’s history.

Leadership in 1982 Crisis

When the Tylenol crisis happened in 1982, Burke directed the removal of 31 million bottles of Tylenol products valued at more than $100 million from store shelves (Kaplan). Burke took the lead role for all communications relating to the crisis. As the CEO, he was the face and spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson, providing leadership through the crisis. Burke appeared on the U.S. television news program, 60 Minutes, and allowed cameras to be present during strategy sessions (Yang). Burke did not delegate the responsibility of communication to a company spokesperson or division head (Prokesch). Multiple case studies, many through Harvard Business School, detail the way Johnson & Johnson and its leaders handled the crisis.

Leadership Now Crisis

Under Weldon, the company recalled more than 50 products during a 15-month period between 2009 and 2011. The product recalls spanned various subsidiaries, including products such as Motrin, Tylenol, Children’s Tylenol products, Rolaids, and Benadryl from the consumer products division of McNeil Consumer Health Care, the same subsidiary that was so successful with crisis management during the 1982 Tylenol crisis. The quality issues were so severe, with potential for adverse effects to the general public, that in July 2010 the FDA required action on the part of McNeil to address the quality issues at various manufacturing plants. The company submitted a remediation plan for McNeil to the FDA, and in March 2011 the FDA expanded oversight at three plants for McNeil, due to the company’s failure to make significant improvements in quality.

Questions Presented:

Compare and contrast the leadership strategies used by Burke and Weldon: What changes could have been made by either CEO to improve the situation he faced?

Compare and contrast the communication strategies used by Burke and Weldon. What changes could have been made by either CEO to improve the situation he faced?

Compare and contrast the crisis management strategies used by Johnson & Johnson in the two situations.

Write a c++ class definition for an abstract data type describing a bookstore inventory. Each book has the following attributes:

Book Title (character string);
Book Author (character string);
Book Price (Floating point number having two decimal places);
Count of books on hand (int);

The member functions are as follows:
A constructor that is used to initialize all four elements of the structure to values inputted by the user;

A function that displays in a readable tabular form the contents of a book in inventory;

A modify function that has an argument a code ('T', 'A', 'P', or 'C') indicating which attribute (title,author,price or count) of the indicated book is to be changed. Based upon the attribute code, the appropriate prompt should be displayed to allow the user to enter the new value of the attribute.

Complete a 2-3-page paper with an abstract and conclusion (plus cover sheet and reference page) that discusses:

1. How does a cloud based storage service differ from Software as a Service (SaaS)?

2. Give a brief overview of the following types of cloud based storage (Public, Private, Hybrid and Mobile).

3. What are the disadvantages and advantages to using cloud based storage?

4. What are the availability, performance, and security considerations?

Specific questions or items to address:

1. How does a cloud based storage service differ from Software as a Service (SaaS)?

2. Give a brief overview of the following types of cloud based storage (Public, Private, Hybrid and Mobile).

3. What are the disadvantages and advantages to using cloud based storage?

4. What are the availability, performance, and security considerations?

Write in Java

1. Modify the parent class (Plant) by adding the following abstract methods:(The class give in the end of question)
   1. a method to return the botanical (Latin) name of the plant
   2. a method that describes how the plant is used by humans (as food, to build houses, etc)
2. Add a Vegetable class with a flavor variable (sweet, salty, tart, etc) and 2 methods that return the following information:
   1. list 2 dishes (meals) that the vegetable can be used in
   2. where this vegetable is grown

The Vegetable class should have the usual constructors (default and parameterized), get (accessor) and set (mutator) methods for each attribute, and a toString method

Child classes should call parent methods whenever possible to minimize code duplication.

The driver program must test all the methods in the Vegetable class, and show that the new methods added to the Plant class can be called by each of the child classes. Include comments in your output to describe what you are testing, for example   System.out.println(“testing Plant toString, accessor and mutator”);. Print out some blank lines in the output to make it easier to read and understand what is being output.

public class Plant {
  
private String name;
private String lifespan;

public Plant(){
name = "no name";
lifespan = "do not know";
}
public Plant(String newName, String newlife)
{
name = newName;
lifespan = newlife;
}
public String getName()
{
return name;
}
public String getlife()
{
return lifespan;
}
public void setName(String newName)
{
name = newName;
}
public void setLifeSpan(String newlife)
{
lifespan = newlife;
}
public void set(String newName, String newlife)
{
name = newName;
lifespan = newlife;
}
public String toString()
{
return "Name:"+name+"\nLifeSpan:"+lifespan;
}
}

Scott Mcnealy and Sun Microsystems

Abstract:

Scott McNealy had been the CEO of Sun Microsystems, a company that he had co-founded in 1984, for 22 years. In April 2006, he announced his decision to step down in favor of Sun's president and COO Jonathan Schwartz.

This case study discusses the various events at Sun under McNealy's leadership. It traces the company's growth from a small startup in the mid 1980s to one of the driving forces behind the internet economy in the 1990s. It also talks about the events that led to Sun's decline in the early 2000s, and McNealy' failure to arrest this decline. The case concludes with a discussion of the leadership change at Sun and whether Schwartz was the right person to give the ailing company a new lease of life.

Questions:

1. Assuming that you were hired as a consultant to the Sun board of directors, describe what should be done with the Sun management team.  Make it clear whether the management team should be changed or whether economic and technological circumstances have caused the problems at Sun, meaning the current management team can still lead Sun to success.

INTRODUCTION

"Scott (McNealy) is kind of like Moses. (He) led the world to the land of milk and honey, but he got left behind."

- Paul Saffo, director, Institute for the Future,1 in 2004.2

"Sun has been a labor of love for me for since 1982 and it has been an honor and privilege to serve as its CEO for the past 22 years. We've helped shape the industry as it is today, and the opportunities before us are immense."2

- Scott McNealy, co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, in 2006.3

The End of an ERA

In April 2006, Scott McNealy (McNealy), the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun), announced that he would step down as the CEO of Sun in favor of the company's president and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jonathan Schwartz (Schwartz). This was significant news for the IT industry, as McNealy had been at the helm of Sun for the last 22 years and had steered the company through a series of ups and downs in the industry.

The announcement was made on the same day that Sun announced a loss of $217 million4 for the quarter ended March 31st 2006, (taking the company's cumulative losses since 2002 to a staggering $4.5 billion).

It was not a surprise as Wall Street had been calling for McNealy's resignation since the early 2000s when Sun first went into decline following the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubbles in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Between fiscal years 2001 and 20055, Sun saw its sales fall 39 percent and its share price plummet from a peak of $64 in mid 2002 to around $4 by 2005. Following the announcement of McNealy's exit, the stock gained 8.6 percent in extended trading and reached its highest level of the year at $5.41 (Refer Exhibit I for Sun's share prices).

McNealy said that the leadership change was a part of the company's succession planning efforts, and that he was looking forward to playing the role of 'chief evangelist' within Sun. However, some analysts felt that that the board had forced McNealy to step down under intense pressure from Wall Street over the company's poor financial performance.

McNealy was to continue as the chairman of Sun's board as well as chairman of the board of Sun Federal, Inc.6 McNealy was as well known in the IT industry for his visionary leadership of Sun in the 1980s and 1990s, as for his witty takes on competitors, especially Microsoft Corp. (Microsoft)...

He was one of the most controversial leaders in the industry, but even his harshest critics could not deny that he played a pivotal role in shaping the future of computing. It was not surprising therefore that when the leadership change at Sun was announced, analysts said it was 'the end of an era'in the history of the IT industry.

Background

McNealy was born on November 13, 1954 in Indiana. His father, William McNealy was vice chairman at American Motors Corp. (AMC).7 As a child, McNealy took an avid interest in the auto industry - an interest encouraged by his father, who often discussed business with the youngster and allowed him to accompany him when he went to play golf with people like Lee A. Iacocca.8

After attending Cranbrook Kingswood School, a preparatory school near Detroit, McNealy was accepted at Harvard University, from where he graduated with a degree in Economics in 1976. He then tried for a place at Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford) but was rejected.

While trying for an admission into Stanford, McNealy took up a job as foreman at the Rockwell International Corp. (Ohio), which made body panels for trucks. When he eventually got into Stanford in 1978, he chose to specialize in manufacturing rather than the more popular finance. He was not a dedicated student and later admitted that he spent more time 'goofing off' than in classes.

One of his classmates recalled that McNealy never bothered to attend any class that he did not think would help him get a job. At that point McNealy was not ambitious. Reportedly, his ambition was to start a small machine shop that he could leave to his children, and then, to retire early. After graduating in 1980, he worked in the manufacturing departments of FMC Corp. (which made tanks for the US army) and of minicomputer maker Onyx Systems. In 1982, Vinod Khosla (Khosla), McNealy's classmate at Stanford, asked him to join him, Andy Bechtolsheim (Bechtolsheim) and Bill Joy (Joy) in starting a computer manufacturing unit to make and sell workstations operating on UNIX.

The Golden Years

It was McNealy's dynamism and vision that were largely responsible for Sun's rapid growth in the first two decades of the company's existence. When McNealy first joined Sun, he was in charge of manufacturing, but later became responsible for sales as well. This helped him develop a good understanding of different areas of the business. After McNealy became CEO in 1984, he played an important role in shaping Sun's vision that 'The Network is the Computer'. Sun was committed to developing technologies that would allow computers to connect seamlessly over a network, thus increasing their power tremendously. Networking would allow computing to be provided like a utility, just like electricity and telecommunications..

The Decline

The beginning of the new millennium turned out to be inauspicious for the US economy. The collapse of several dotcom and telecom companies combined with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US sent the economy into a decline, and one of the worst affected by these adversities was the IT industry...

Conclusion

According to analysts, Sun could have become one of the giants of the IT industry, on par with IBM and Microsoft. Many concepts that had become the standard in the early 2000s, like networking and open source, were first popularized by Sun. But the company took some missteps along the way, which did not allow it to take advantage of its resources. "They've (Sun) always had lots of great things on paper. But when it comes to execution, they're lacking. They always seem to be behind where they need to be" said Gary Feierstein, vice-president for information technology at Premier Inc., a hospital management company.

Select a research paper topic and develop an abstract.

Write 150 word topic proposal for your final project.

Your topic needs to focus on a critical challenge in cybersecurity facing National Security Professionals. This challenge can come from technology, policy, international relations, economics, or any of the fields where the digital world brings its effects to bear. Think about recent cybersecurity incidents and events. What research question comes to mind when you think of cybersecurity challenges?

Your topic proposals need to be clear and precise. Use bulleted points to clearly state the topic and address the parameters in at least one or two sentences.

Specifications

• Create an abstract Employee class that provides private attributes for the first name, last name, email address, and social security number. This class should provide functions that set and return the employee’s first name, last name, email address, and social security number. This class has a function: get_net_income which returns 0.
• Create a Manager class that inherits the Employee class. This class should add private attributes for years of experience and the annual salary. This class should also provide necessary set and get functions. It should add a bonus ($1,000/year of experience) to the annual salary. The income tax rate should be 30%. This class should override the get_net_income function of the Employee class. Note that the gross income is calculated as follows:
  • bonus = years of experience * 1000
  • gross income = annual salary + bonus
  • tax rate = 30%
  • income tax = gross income * tax rate
  • net income = gross income - income tax
• Create a Representative class that inherits the Employee class. This class should add private attributes for the weekly hours of work and the pay rate. This class should also provide necessary set and get functions. The income tax rate should be 20%. This class should override the get_net_income function of the Employee class. Note that the gross income is calculated as follows:
  • gross income = weekly hours of work * 52 * pay rate
  • tax rate = 20%
  • income tax = gross income * tax rate
  • net income = gross income - income tax
• In the main function, the program should create Manager or Representative objects from the data entered by the user and save them in a list named employees. After the user has terminated data entries, your program should display the information of all employees on the output with this format: last name, first name, email, social security number, net income.

Sample Output (Your output should be similar to the text in the following box)