EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT AT ESPN Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, known as ESPN, is in the global multimedia sports and entertainment business. To remain in its leadership role in the sports and entertainment business, ESPN needs to continue to provide the best live sports programming as well as expand and develop its digital presence through social media. To do so, ESPN recognizes the importance of creating exceptional employee experiences through its commitment to people, partnerships, culture, and excellence. Employee development plays a key role in helping to create exceptional employee experiences at ESPN. But employee development at ESPN faces several challenges. One challenge is the speed at which the global news, broadcasting, and entertainment business operates. This can make it difficult for employees to take the time away from activities such as producing and delivering programming to focus on development activities. Another challenge is that ESPN has reportedly been asked by its parent company, Disney, to cut as much as $250 million from this year’s budget. This likely will result in layoffs for 200–300 employees. ESPN has taken several steps to ensure that its development efforts overcome these challenges and support employees’ career interests and goals, enhance their skills, and grow top leadership talent. ESPN requires every employee to complete an individual development plan (IDP). The IDP helps employees consider where they currently are in their careers, their career goals, and how they plan to reach their career goals. The learning function at ESPN reviews and supports the IDP, which has been completed by over 95% of employees. Similar to other companies, ESPN uses the 70-20-10 approach to development. This means that most employee development occurs on the Page 418job, whereas 20% comes from relationships and informal learning, and 10% from formal courses targeted at specific skills. For example, ESPN has a Leadership GPS, which is a tool used by employees to track their development progress. The Leadership GPS helps employees set development goals. It also provides advice on which types of development activities (such as courses, job shadowing, or experiences) are available and will help them meet their goals. ESPN The University offers courses related to different business areas, which are taught by executives and business leaders. This is important because its gets company leaders from different business areas involved in developing employees. It also helps to provide employees with a greater understanding of the different aspects of ESPN’s business such as production, programming, and HR and how they fit together. ESPN Center Court is a development program targeted exclusively to high-potential employees who are on the fast track to future leadership roles in the company. Center Court uses job rotations to give high-potential employees the opportunity to experience different aspects of the business. They also interact with the company’s president and top executives. To facilitate development through relationships, ESPN has a mentoring program known as Open Access that is available to all employees. The only requirements are that employees desire to learn from others and want to build relationships to achieve their development goals. To ensure that development activities support business needs, ESPN has a learning and advisory board, which includes senior leaders and vice presidents from its different businesses. Every major initiative is reviewed and has to receive support from the board before it is implemented. Also, the Employee Learning Council, which includes employees from each of ESPN’s business units, provides feedback and helps to plan development programs.

How could ESPN identify employees with the potential for top leadership positions?

Super Sonics Entertainment is considering buying a machine that costs $435,000. The machine will be depreciated over five years by the straight-line method and will be worthless at that time. The company can lease the machine with year-end payments of $107,500. The company can issue bonds at a 9 percent interest rate. If the corporate tax rate is 35 percent, should the company buy or lease?

34. The video in class featuring Tom Brady was given as an example of Branded Entertainment. A company that is well known, that is very good at this, is?

a. Nike

b. Disney

c. Netflix

d. Lego

e. None of the above

35. Jane Jones is a top-notch soccer player. She is a very fast winger and needs to use her speed to beat opposing defenders. Her soccer cleats lightweight design allows her to do this very well, even though the product is not very durable and she has to replace them frequently. This does not concern her as speed is of the essence to her game. This is an example of?

a. Perceived importance

b. Consumption Motive

c. Compensatory Decision Rule

d. Attitude

e. None of the above

36. Marketers believe that much of our consumer behavior is driven by a need to attain ?

a. Tension

b. Homeostatis

c. Crescive Norm

d. Cognitive Dissonance

e. “All in”

37.The main difference between Strivers and Achievers is?

a. Strivers try to emulate, Achievers do not

b. Strivers and Achievers occupy the same space in the Personality model

c. Achievers favor local brands, Strivers do not

d. Strivers favor home centered experiences, Achievers do not

e. None of the above

38.Physiological products are those products that address?

a. Adjacency

b. UCS

c. Basic needs

d. Demographic needs

e. None of the above

39. The concept of anthropomorphism can be explained as?

a. The attribution of self-concept to inanimate objects

b. The attribution of archetypes to segments

c. Self -Actualization

d. The attribution of human characteristics to objects or animals

e. Segmentation by morphing

Assignment6A: This used to be entertainment. If you haven’t played the classic game Pong, then you are now required to do so. Though it doesn’t capture the poor quality of the original, you can find an emulator at Pong-2.com. Play it (using the keyboard).   Do you see how the ball bounces off of the walls and the paddles? You’re going to learn how to do this by creating class Ball.

A Ball has an X and Y position. Equally important, a ball has an x velocity and a y velocity. Every time the ball moves (in one unit of time), it changes its X and Y position by its x and y velocity. However, before moving it, you need to check to see if it’s touching a wall. If so, you need to reverse either its x or y velocity depending on whether or not its touching a wall. What is the ball’s location if its touching a wall? For simplicity, we’re going to assume that the ball is on a 10x10 field and that the x and y velocities can only be -1, 0, or +1.

Your task is to 1) write class Ball that has the variables/attributes above, 2) has a constructor that takes in the starting X and Y position as well as the starting X and Y velocity, 3) has a method called “move” that takes no parameters and updates the position of the ball and 4) has a print statement called “print” that takes no parameters and prints out the ball’s current position.

You must call the class “Ball” and put it in a file called Ball(.java, .cs, .cpp, .h). To test your ball, you should create a file called Assignment6A(.java, .cs, .cpp) that creates a ball based off of user input and calls the “move” and “print” methods of the ball the number of times the user wants. It should behave like the sample output below.

Question 1(a) “Chain Saw”AL and Sunbeam (1995-1998)AL Dunlop was proud of the fact that he was at the bottom of his West Point class (he did graduate). Afrightening thought worthy of Dr.Strangelove is that as an officer he was assigned to a missile silo and the missiles were armed with nuclear weapons.He was chosen to turn around Scott Paper company. Within six months he had dismissed 11,200 employees including 50 percent of all managers and 70 percent of all corporate staff and paid off a significant amount of Scott’s long term debt. He then sold the company to Kimberly-Clark making over $100 million from his stock options.In the spring of 1995 AL Dunlop gave a talk at the Johnson School in Professor Bierman’s finance course. He received a standing ovation for his talk which stressed that managers should increase shareholder value.That night there was a dinner in his honour at Renees attended by Charles Elson (law school professor and friend of AL), Bob Gibbons, Jerry Hass and Hal Bierman(the last three wereJohnson School professors). It was a dinner from hell. Dunlop insisted on using profanity continuously and incorrectly and insulting each of the professors in sequence. Attempts at peace making were turned into profane tirades. He was actually an unintelligent, dislikeable and uninformed man. The next day a group of students came to Professor Bierman’s office and advocatedALDunlop for Dean of the School. Bierman suggested that they approach the tenth person they met incollegetown and offer the job to that person since he would perform better.July 18, 1996 Dunlop (now 59) was made Chairman of the Board of the Sunbeam Corporation, a company in need of help. On July 17, the stock price was $12.25. By July 19, the stock reached a price of $19.50. This wasthe biggest gain prompted by a chief executive announcement in the history of theNew York Stock Exchange. Professor Bierman took it as a matter of honour to sell the stock short.

Sunbeam paid Dunlop a salary of $1 million a year,2.5 million options to buy at $12.25 and one million shares of restricted stock(worth $18 million). The total package has a value in excess of $38 million.By August 8, he had dismissed the president of Sunbeam’s household products group, the chief financial officer, the chief operating officer North America, and the vice president of strategic planning for North America. Sunbeam had 60 staff people at its Fort Lauderdale headquarters. The market expected headcount reductions. Dunlop sent the following press release “I set as an initial goal the quick appointment of a highly focused management team to provide leadership in the transition to the Sunbeam Corporation”. He also stated “if you can’t rum a company around in a year, you can’t do it at all”.In November 1996, Dunlop announced a major restructuring.Headcount will be reduced by 50% to 6,000. Some of the reductions willbe the result of divestitures. In January 1997, Sunbeam sold its clock, timers, and thermometer units to CIT Group Holdings for $8 million (the units generated $20 million in annual revenues). By the first quarter of 1997, Sunbeam had a positive (but small) profit, Sales were almost as high as in 1995 but not as high as the first halfof 1996.But some critics pointed out that there were last minute sales drives in the first quarter of 1997, including deliveries when the orders had been cancelled because of failure to deliver in time.Dunlop said “we are definitely on schedule and we will probably deliver better results than we expected “.The stock price broke through $30.Professor Bierman sold short more shares.By December 1997,the stock price reached $41.Professor Biermancovered his short position having lost all faith in the efficiency of the stock market.by the end of 1997,the stock reacheda high of $50 7/16 and the company reported net earnings of $109.4 million ($1.41 per share) for the year.In the fall of 1997, Dunlop hired Morgan Stanley to sell Sunbeam. The $50 stock price precluded any bids. Dunlop decided if he could not sell then he would buy. In March1998, Sunbeam purchased Coleman Corporation for $2.2 billion and Signature Brands and First Alert for $425 million. Now Sunbeam had over $2 billion of in debt and itsnet worth was a negative $600 million.

By June 8, 1998, the business press wondered whether Dunlop had manufactured Sunbeam’s 1997 earnings by accelerating the bookings of sales and various accounting tricks .one author estimated the inflation in profits to be $120 million. This estimate was probably too low.On Saturday, June 13, 1998, AlbertJ. Dunlop was fired by Sunbeam. The motion to remove Dunlop was made by Charles Elson, Dunlop’s good friend and staunch alley in the pursuit of shareholders rights. Elson was an honourable person who voted on behalf of Sunbeam’s shareholders and against his friend. Sunbeam’s stock had fallen to $18.0625 on Friday, June 12. The stock continued to fall to $11.25 by June 29. The stock price decline continued with the stock price falling below ten in July (Biermann was right, if poorer).On April 22, 1999, Sunbeam reported a loss of $898 million for 1998. Its warehouses were full of finished goods inventories. The stock sold for $5.375. Finally, AL Dunlop announced that he was ready to another corporation.Required:(i)ALDunlop was a great success at Scott Paper selling out to Kimberly-Clark at a fine profit. Why was he a failure at Sunbeam?(ii)With hindsight we know AL at Sunbeam was a disaster. What hints were there that maybe he was not going to be a success at Sunbeam?(iii)What generalizationsare there?(iv)Sunbeam reported $109.4 million of income for the year 1997. What accounting related actions could Sunbeam have taken that would inflate 1997 income?(v)What real actions in 1996 and 1997 would tend to increase income? Which of these actions are desirable?(vi)As a consultant hired in 1996 would you doas Dunlop wants you to do or would you do what you think is best for Sunbeam? Assume Dunlop’s actions will harm Sunbeam’s stockholders and employees.

During the period 1990–1998 there were 46 Atlantic hurricanes, of which 20 struck the United States. During the period 1999–2006 there were 70 hurricanes, of which 46 struck the United States.

1. At α = 0.10, do the data support the hypothesis that the percentage of hurricanes that strike the United States is increasing? Follow and show the 7 steps for hypothesis testing

2. What assumption is required for this test? Show if the assumption is valid.

3. Verify with Minitab, by attaching or including the output.

Enacted in 1998, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires firms to obtain parental consent before tracking the information and the online movement of children; however, the act applies to those children ages 12 and under. Teenagers are often oblivious to the consequences of sharing their lives online. Data reapers create huge libraries of digital profiles and sell these profiles to advertisers, who use it to detect trends and micro-target their ads back to teens. For example, a teen searching online for ways to lose weight could become enticed by an ad for dietary supplements, fed into his/her network by tracking cookies. As a preliminary step in gauging the magnitude of teen usage of social networking sites, an economist surveys 200 teen girls and 200 teen boys. Of teen girls, 166 use social networking sites; of teen boys, 156 use social networking sites.

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In a report, use the sample information to

1. Construct a contingency table that shows frequencies for the qualitative variables Gender (male or female) and Use of Social Networking Sites (Yes or No).

2. Determine the probability that a teen uses social networking sites.

3. Determine the probability that a teen girl uses a social networking site.

4. A bill before Congress would like to extend the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to apply to 15-year-olds. In addition, the bill would also ban Internet companies from sending targeted advertising to children under 16 and give these children and their parents the ability to delete their digital footprint and profile with an “eraser button” (The Boston Globe, May 20, 2012). Given the probabilities that you calculated with respect to teen usage of social networking sites, do you think that this legislation is necessary? Explain.

During the period 1990–1998 there were 50 Atlantic hurricanes, of which 22 struck the United States. During the period 1999–2006 there were 75 hurricanes, of which 53 struck the United States.

• At α = 0.10, do the data support the hypothesis that the proportion of hurricanes that strike the United States is increasing? Follow and show the 7 steps for hypothesis testing.
• What assumption is required for this test? Show if the assumption is valid.  
• Verify with Minitab, by attaching or including the output.

upper quarter. 2. During the years 1998–2012, a total of 29 earthquakes
of magnitude greater than 6.5 have occurred in Papua New Guinea. Assume that the time
spent waiting between earthquakes is
exponential. Do in R (Practice and check
with calculator) a. What is the probability that the next earthquake
occurs within the next three months?
b. Given that six months has passed without an
earwhat is the pr thquake in Papua New Guinea, obability that the next three
months will be free of earthquakes? c. What is the probability of zero
earthquakes occurring in 2014? d. What is the probability that at least two
earthquake distributed with a mean of 100 and