In 1923, the United States Army (there was no U.S. Air Force at that time) set a record for in-flight refueling of airplanes. Using two refueling planes, an Airco DH-4B biplane was able to remain in flight for 37 hours. During the flight, the refueling planes were able to air-transfer a total of 687 gallons of fuel to the plane in 9 refueling transfers. Assume that the refueling nozzle had a diameter of 1.25 inches and each refueling took 2.43 minutes to perform. Calculate the velocity of the fuel through the nozzle. Assume that the fuel filled the entire cross-sectional area of the nozzle.

What were the main reasons for the United States, Canada, and Mexico to sign on to the original NAFTA? After more than 20 years, has NAFTA delivered the benefits expected? How might NAFTA be improved to the benefit of all three members’ countries?

Steel City Inc. is a company located in Dallas in the United States of America. It deals in import export of furniture. The workforce is composed of almost 200 employees, from different levels. In Steel City, Inc., the president Anna, 33 years old, realizes that this firm requires some reorganization.

The organization is using the top down management approach, it has many levels of management and it uses narrowly specialized job descriptions.

Anna wants to move into new international markets but she noticed that employees are demotivated and they are not happy in their positions knowing that Steel City, Inc is applying highly specialized jobs and employees already work independently and in complete autonomy.

Knowing that motivation is very crucial to the productivity of her employees, Anna wanted to work on this issue by increasing employees’ motivation. To do so, she decided to review and change some core characteristics of what they are doing and she was sure that this will certainly end up with beneficial work outcomes.

Anna also used the work flow analysis of Steel City, Inc to define how work in this organization creates value to the ongoing process of employees’ works. She thought that applying the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) might be very efficient to solve the problem of employees’ demotivation since employees have been complaining about their work. Jobs are repetitive and employees don't know how their work fits into the big organizational picture. The president wants to reduce operating costs, reorganize jobs by providing employees with satisfying work, independency and wanted them to be cross trained on different task assigned to the group.

Anna also thought about using a problem solving team to be able to generate solutions about how to decrease employees’ demotivation and increase their work involvement, devotion and commitment.

As she wants jobs to become more interesting and precisely to improve motivation, Anna included specialized task together so employees can expand their work horizontally and vertically. All of this should give employees more autonomy and the opportunity for feedback. Anna decided to compare the productivity of her employees six months after she made the needed adjustments in the company.

1. Based on the above case study, what is the used organizational structure by Steel City, Inc? Explain.

2. Which motivation theory the president's is using to minimize employees’ dissatisfaction?

3. When the job needs to be reorganized some job design modifications should also be implemented. What job design do you propose taking into consideration employees’ complains?

4. What type of team the president can use in order to reduce operating costs giving employees some autonomy in Steel City, Inc.?

Question 1:

Table 1. India’s trade

Table 2. India’s trading partners (2016)

In seven to ten sentences, discuss what the data in both tables tells you. For your discussion, you are free to focus on the data that you can effectively explain.

Review the three scenarios below. Look for which, if any, of these scenarios presents an example of post-investment holdup.

1. Your firm conducted a search for a new chief financial officer and hired a highly qualified candidate with a yearly salary of $250,000. After six months, the person left to join another firm.
2. Your firm has an exclusive contract to assemble automobile seats for a number of luxury models. Almost 100% of the materials are imported and, of those, over 50% include parts manufactured in China. All of the prices on the parts from China increased by 25% when the U.S. imposed tariffs on China. Your company has informed all of its customers that increased cost must be passed on for your firm to continue supplying the seats. All of your customers reluctantly agreed to pay the additional cost.
3. Your company took note of your progress toward your MBA, and when the director for customer services left the company, you were asked to take over as interim director. You were encouraged to apply for the full-time position once you got your MBA. You served for 13 months, at which time your company was acquired by another company and your position was abolished.

In your discussion post, address the following:

• Which of the above, if any, are an example of post-investment holdup?
• Define the following and explain each within the context of a chosen scenario:
  • What is the sunk, or stranded, cost?
  • What is the contract?
  • Was the contract breached?
  • What are the damages?

Question 4 – Undergraduate Degree and MBA Major (3 parts, 14 marks)

The MBA program was experiencing problems scheduling its courses. The demand for the

program’s optional courses and majors was quite variable from one year to the next. In one

year, students seem to want marketing courses; in other years, accounting or finance are the

rage. In desperation, the dean of the business school turned to a Statistics professor for

assistance. The Statistics professor believed that the problem may be the variability in the

academic background of the students and that the undergraduate degree affects the choice

of major. As a start, he took a random sample of last year’s MBA students and recorded the

undergraduate degree and the major selected in the graduate program. The undergraduate

degrees were BA (=1), BEng (=2), BBA (=3), and several others (=4). There are three possible

majors for the MBA students: Accounting (=1), Finance (=2), and Marketing (=3). Can the

Statistics professor conclude that the undergraduate degree affects the choice of major?

a) [2 Marks] Create a cross-classified (or contingency) table with undergraduate degree as

the row and MBA major as the column. The data in this table should be deemed as

observed counts.

b) [3 Marks] Create another table with the corresponding expected counts and having row

totals, column totals, and grand total. Round each cell value to two decimal places.

c) [9 Marks] Perform a chi-square test to assess the association (or independence) between

an undergraduate degree and choice of MBA major at 5% level of significance. Verify the

assumptions required for the chi-square test of independence. Make sure you follow all

the steps for hypothesis testing indicated in the Instructions section and show your

computations.

what are the degrees of freedom?

a. yes, at p < .05

b. yes, at p < .01

c. yes, at p < .001

d. no, at p > .05

1. What was the Early Cold War? How did the United States and Soviet Union come to regard each other during this period? Be sure to talk about key ideas and events as well as America’s overall foreign policy stance during this period.