In: Chemistry
Neon's gross color was orange. Individual spectral lines had colors ROY G BI.
Krypton's gross color was a whitish purple. Individual spectral lines had colors O G IV.
Xenon's gross color was white with a hint of blue. Individual spectral lines had colors ROY G BIV.
How do the gross colors of the gas tubes compare to the individual spectral lines? Does the gross color result from a combination of spectral lines or one intense line?
In: Chemistry
In: Economics
New Wave Music
New Wave Music is an international company that develops music software that is used to compose music, play recordings in clubs, and produce albums. Founder and CEO Moritz Halbach is the company’s biggest fan. He said “I started this company from nothing, just me, my ideas, and my computer. I love music---love playing music, love writing programs for making music, love listening to music---and the money is nice, too.” Moritz says that he never wanted to work for someone else or to give away his ideas and let someone else profit from them. He was keen to keep control over this ideas and their image. “New Wave Music is always ahead of the pack. In this business, if you can’t keep up, you’re out. We are the company that everyone else is concerned about keeping up with. Everyone knows that when they get something from us, they’re getting only the best and the newest.”
The headquarters for the company is in Berlin, Germany. It is the nerve center for the organization, where new products are developed and organizational strategy is established. The company does a great deal of its coding work at its office in Kiev, Ukraine and its marketing efforts are increasingly based in its Los Angeles, California office. This division of labor is partially based on technical expertise and cost issues. The German team in Berlin excels at design and production tasks. Because most of the company’s customers are English speakers, the Los Angeles office has been viewed as the best group to write ads and market products. The Kiev office is filled with outstanding programmers who don’t require the very high rates of compensation that are found in Germany and the United States. In terms of management style, Mortiz makes the final decision on hiring every employee for the company and places a heavy emphasis on independent work styles. He states “Why would I want to put my company in the hands of people that I can’t count on? My employees have to believe in what we are doing here, really understand our direction and be able to go with it. I’m not a babysitter, this is the real world.”
The work environment is that employees want to work for the firm because it has a reputation for being cutting edge. New Wave Music’s software is used by a number of dance musicians and DJs who have been the firm’s core market. They view the product as expensive but a very high quality and innovative brand. Whenever the rest of the market for music software tends to go in a certain direction, New Wave Music heads in a completely different direction to keep itself separate from the pack. This strategy has paid off. While competitors develop similar products to one another and have to continually lower their prices to compete with one another, New Wave Music has kept its revenues high by creating completely new types of products.
Unfortunately, computer piracy has eroded the company’s ability to make money with just software-based music tools and has had to move into the production of hardware (such as drum machines and amplifiers) that incorporates computer technology. Making this change would be challenging for some companies but for a company that reinvents itself every 2-3 years like New Wave Music does, the bigger battle is against stagnation and rigidity. With only 115 employees, the original management philosophy of allowing all employees to participate in decision making and innovation is still the lifeblood of the company’s culture. One developed notes “At New Wave Music, they want us to be part of the process. If you are a person who wants to do what you are told at work, you are in trouble. Most times, they can’t tell you what they want you to do next----they don’t even know what comes next! That’s why they hire employees who are creative, people who try to make the next thing happen. It’s challenging but a lot of us think that it is a very exciting environment.”
Because so much of the work can be performed on computers, Moritz decided early on to allow employees to work outside the office. The senior management in Berlin and Los Angeles are quite happy with this arrangement. Because some marketing work does require face-to-face contact, the Los Angeles office has weekly meetings. Employees who like the company are happiest when they can work through the night and sleep most of the day, firing up their computers to get work done at the drop of a hat. Project discussions often happen via social networking on the company’s intranet. Employees at the Kiev office have been less eager about this work model. Managers say that their computer programmers find working with so little structure is rather uncomfortable and are more used to a more structured environment with strong leadership and well-defined work processes. One Kiev managers stated “When I started, Moritz said that getting in touch with either him or those in Los Angeles would be no problem. We’re small and like a family, he said. Well, it is a problem. When I call Los Angeles, they say that I need to wait until their meeting day. I can’t always wait until they decide to get together. I call Moritz and he says ‘Figure it out.’ Then when I do, he says it isn’t right and we have to start again. If he just told me in the first place, we would have done it.”
Some recent events have also shaken up the company’s usual way of doing business. Developers in the corporate office had a major communication breakdown about their hardware DJ controller which required many hours of discussion to resolve. It seemed that people who seldom met face-to-face had all made progress but had all moved in different directions. To test and design the company’s hardware products, employees were finding that they needed to do more than send each other code and that face-to-face collaboration was necessary. Some spirited disagreements have been voiced within the organization about how things should move forward with regard to this problem. The Los Angeles office is also experiencing difficulties. Sandra Post, a key employee in that office, has been more critical of the company since its shift to newer products. “With the software, we were more limited in the kinds of advertising media we could access. So, now with the hardware---real instruments---we finally thought ‘All right, this is something we can work with!’ We had a whole slate of musicians, producers, and DJs to contact for endorsements but Moritz said ‘No way.’ He didn’t want customers who only cared that a celebrity liked us so he scrapped the whole campaign. He says we’re all about creativity and doing our own thing---until we don’t do things his way.”
Although the organization is not without problems, there is no question that New Wave Music has been a standout success in the computer music software industry. While many are shuttering their operations, the company is using its market power to push forward the next generation of electronic music-making tools. As Mortiz puts it, “Once the rest of the industry has gotten together and figured out how they’re all going to cope with change, they’ll look around and see that we’re already three miles ahead of them down the road to the future.”
Questions
Please answer the following questions. Your grade will be based heavily on how well you use course information/topics, as well as examples of information from the case, to support your answers. This case deals primarily with issues of personality, organizational culture, leadership, cross-cultural issues, motivation, and job satisfaction, but feel free to utilize other concepts if you see them as relevant.
What type of organizational culture does New Wave Music appear to have and why do you say this?
Does it seem appropriate for the company, given their industry and goals as a firm?
Do you believe that a different type of organizational culture would be more appropriate? Why?
In: Operations Management
SCENARIO
Textbooks R Us is a small business that was set up 20 years ago to facilitate the physical sale of second-hand textbooks for University students. They would now like to change their business model to an e-business model where they only sell their books online. Its business will run entirely on the Internet and students will be able to sell and purchase books via their website. This will allow the business to increase their market as they will not be restricted to selling books at the one University campus. Textbooks R Us has tasked your team to come up with the requirements for their new system.
Sellers must have an account with Textbooks R Us to sell any books via their website. To create an account, sellers must register and provide various details when setting up their account. These details include their physical address, postal address, name, telephone number, a current email address and banking details for the receipt of money after their books have been sold.
Buyers must also open an account if they wish to purchase a textbook, however they can search for books on the website without having an account. To create an account, buyers must register and provide various details when setting up their account. These details include their physical address, postal address, name, telephone number, a current email address and credit card details. Buyers can purchase as many books as desired in the same transaction or through separate transactions. Books can be purchased via credit card or PayPal.
A seller can list books on the system through completing an online form. The details which must be provided on the form include information on the book to be sold such as: its category, title, author, year of publication, condition and the asking price. An option to upload a photo of the books is also available for buyers to see the condition of the book. A seller may list as many books as desired. A seller may also remove books for sale if they wish or amend the sale price.
The system will maintain a list of all books for buyers to use a search engine to search for books of interest by title, author, category, and keyword.
The system will provide secure access for all users and information is to be maintained on secure servers. Sensitive financial information and private user details are not to be disclosed to other users of the system.
When a purchase is made, Textbooks R Us will send an e-mail notice and/or a text message to the seller of the book that was chosen as well as payment information. The seller will have the option of choosing which method of notification they prefer when setting up their account, i.e. via email and/or via text message to their mobile phone. The system will also mark the book as sold and maintain an open order status until it receives notice that the book has been shipped by the seller.
Once the seller has received the notification that the book has been sold, they must notify the buyer via their chosen notification method (email and/or text message) within 48 hours that the purchase has been accepted and they must ship the order within 48 hours of sending the notification to the buyer. The seller will then send a notification to the buyer (again via their preferred method) and to Textbooks R Us when the shipment is made.
Upon receiving notice that the shipment has been made, Textbooks R Us will change the status of the book order to a shipped status. Buyers will have a 30-day period to receive a refund from Textbooks R Us if the book does not arrive, or to return the book if it does not meet the advertised criteria. Once this 30-day period has lapsed, i.e. the book has been in a shipped status for 30 days, the money received for the book will be transferred to the seller’s nominated account by Textbooks R Us and the book’s order status will be changed to sold.
After receiving an ordered book, buyers will have the option of entering a rating for the seller to indicate a measure on several factors regarding their transaction with the seller. Some sellers have been very active using the current business model and this feature will provide them with an important indicator to other potential buyers.
Question
1.) To collect information on the functional requirements you are asked to develop 15 sample questions to discover the requirements, you are going to interview buyers and sellers. Provide the a sample of 15 questions you ask for both stakeholders (i.e 15 questions for buyers and 15 questions for sellers).
In: Operations Management
Sales of sugar-sweetened beverages at stores in Seattle dropped
about 30.5% in the months after the city adopted a tax on such
beverages, says a new study that also looked at sales at stores in
Portland, which has no such tax.
Sales in Portland declined only 10.5%, suggesting sales in Seattle
dropped much more than they would have without a tax, according to
the peer-reviewed study by University of Illinois at Chicago
researchers.
The study’s results are the first to measure the impact of
Seattle’s tax on beverage sales in the city, and they may bolster
claims by supporters that the controversial policy is working as
intended.
“From a public health perspective, this is good,” said Jay Krieger,
a University of Washington professor who heads the nonprofit
Healthy Food America. “People are purchasing less sugary drinks,
and we know that sugary drinks are associated with heart disease,
diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes.”
Seattle’s tax of 1.75 cents per fluid ounce, which took effect on
Jan. 1, 2018, is charged to distributors of sugar-sweetened
beverages. Distributors can pass the tax on to stores, and stores
to consumers. Proponents said the tax would reduce soda sales and
raise money for health and education programs.
Explain, with the aid of a diagram, how a soda tax such as the one
described above would impact consumers, producers and society more
generally.
Comment on whether or not you support such a tax and why.
In: Economics
A company is planning to build an engineering lab at a nearby university through a grant. The building should initially cost $50,000,000 and maintenance cost(end of year) are expected to be $200,000 per year for the first 3 years, $300,000 per year for the next 4 years, and then $400,000 per year after. If the grant will be invested at 10%, how large a donation must the company make? (assume the term is unlimited and lab lasts forever)
In: Finance
I am a depository institution, or bank, that is considered a cooperative (with the corresponding tax advantages) based upon being associated with a certain entity, such as a corporation or village. Who am I?
| a. |
a Commercial Bank |
|
| b. |
a Savings and Loan |
|
| c. |
an Investment Bank |
|
| d. |
a Credit Union |
|
| e. |
a Finance Company |
Which of the following is not tax deductible in the context of a consumer mortgage loan?
| a. |
payment of points involved with the mortgage interest rate |
|
| b. |
payments to property taxes |
|
| c. |
monthly interest payments on the mortgage loan |
|
| d. |
payment of realtor fees |
Which of the following characteristics do not pertain to US Savings Bonds?
| a. |
EE bonds and I bonds pay the holder an interest payment each year which is part of taxable interest for the year, whether or not the household cashes in the bond. |
|
| b. |
They are issued by the federal government. |
|
| c. |
Their interest is exempt from State and Local taxes. |
|
| d. |
I bonds have an interest rate which is adjusted for inflation. |
|
| e. |
EE bonds are typically purchased for less than their face value. |
No need for explanation, thank you!
In: Accounting
A bond is issued with a coupon of 4% paid annually, a maturity of 39 years, and a yield to maturity of 7%. What rate of return will be earned by an investor who purchases the bond for $602.05 and holds it for 1 year if the bond’s yield to maturity at the end of the year is 9%? (Do not round intermediate calculations. Enter your answer as a percent rounded to 2 decimal places. Negative amount should be indicated by a minus sign.)
In: Finance
company: Huawei
1What strategies the company is using?
2What are the cultural issues that they have had to confront in terms of individual, institutional
and product adaptations?
3In which parts of the world are they focused? And why?
4What forms of foreign involvement are they using?
In: Finance