When Howard Schultz founded Starbucks in 1987, he wanted to create a company that would genuinely care for the well-being of its employees. He had been very influenced by his memories of his father, noting that his father “struggled a great deal and never made more than $20,000 a year, and his work was never valued, emotionally or physically, by his employer … This was an injustice … I want our employees to know we value them.” He also believed that happy employees are the key to competitiveness and growth. As he stated: “We can’t achieve our strategic objectives without a work force of people who are immersed in the same commitment as management. Our only sustainable advantage is the quality of our work force. We’re building a national retail company by creating pride in–and stake in–the outcome of our labor.”

Schulz set out to accomplish his goals by creating an empowering corporate culture, exceptional employee benefits, and employee stock ownership programs. While Starbucks enforces almost fanatical standards of coffee quality and customer service, the culture at Starbucks towards employees is laid back and supportive. Employees are empowered to make decisions without constant referral to management, and are encouraged to think of themselves as partners in the business. Starbucks wants employees to use their best judgment in making decisions and will stand behind them. This is reinforced through generous compensation and benefits packages.

In 2000, Schultz announced that he was resigning as CEO and left the firm to pursue other ventures (though he remained chairman of the board of directors). However, after Starbucks began to suffer from slumping net income and decreasing share price, Schultz returned to the helm in 2008. Rather than cutting costs and reducing the work force, Schulz announced his “Transformation Agenda”–a controversial plan to invest in Starbucks’ employees, environment, and community. His plan included:

Competitive employee compensation plans that include equity-based compensation for nonexecutive partners. In 2013, $230 million was paid out in equity awards. In 2015, Starbucks gave all baristas and supervisors a pay raise and increased starting pay rates across the United States. In 2018, Starbucks’s U.S. baristas earned between $7 and $15 an hour (with an average of $9 an hour), plus an average of $742 a year in cash bonus, $286 in stock bonus, $442 in profit sharing, and $1,095 in tips.

Industry-leading health care benefits and 401K benefits for both part-time and full-time workers. Other companies that offer health benefits to part-time workers typically only do so for employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Starbucks broke with industry norms by creating benefits for employees who work at least 20 hours a week.

Tuition reimbursement for students. In June 2014, Starbucks unveiled a “College Achievement Plan” wherein employees who work more than 20 hours a week can work towards a bachelor’s degree through an online program from Arizona State University.

An ethical sourcing plan. Starbucks’ coffee must be purchased from suppliers that adhere to Starbucks’ “C.A.F.E.” standards. These standards include practices related to product quality, economic accountability, and transparency (e.g., suppliers must provide evidence to demonstrate that the price Starbucks pays reaches the farmer), social responsibility (e.g., third-party verifiers provide audits to ensure that suppliers are using safe, fair, and humane working and living conditions, including minimum-wage requirements and the prohibition of child and forced labor), and environmental leadership (e.g., measures to manage waste, protect water quality, and reduce use of agrochemicals).

In founding Starbucks, Schultz's stated primary focus was which of the following groups of stakeholders?

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?

1. a) 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.

2. b) 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.

3. c) Perform a chi-square test to assess the association (or independence) between 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.

1. President Trump passed an executive bill, banning Chinese airplanes from landing in America, and Chinese Post Graduate students from studying in America. As Chinese tourists and students contribute greatly to the US economy, how do you think this law by President trump will affect US productivity and economic growth? Comment particularly on human capital, physical capital, technology, natural resources, and labour
2. With so many Thai businesses closed down during, what do you think is the best way for the economy improve, and to boost productivity. Be specific with your comments about technology, human capital, labour, natural resources, and physical capital.
3. As Stamford International University continues to grow and grow, expanding into post graduate, and doctorate courses, many have asked for higher education to be free. Describe the advantages and disadvantages to the economy, if education was free in Thailand.

Imagine that you have recently finished your MBA and have a company that has entered the arena of Project Management. During your interview, you are told that project management is not something that the company has always done. In fact, the company began as a retail software design company. As the company grew from small to medium-sized, it became apparent that they needed to employ Project Managers to help their clients rollout the use of their software and not leave the PM to the client. As their newest hire, you have been asked to create a proposal for the management team to consider the installation of a bonafide Project Management Department. Your duty is to prepare a concise (about 2-pages) proposal addressing the value of robust project management approach will bring to the company. Be as concise as possible and ensure that at least three key benefits are clearly emphasized.

a)A university planner wants to determine the proportion of spring semester students who will attend summer school. Suppose the university would like a 0.90 probability that the sample proportion is within 0.281 or less of the population proportion.What is the smallest sample size to meet the required precision? (There is no estimation for the sample proportion.)  (Enter an integer number.)

b)A university planner wants to determine the proportion of fall semester students who will attend summer school. She surveys 30 current students discovering that 20 will return for summer school.At 90% confidence, compute the margin of error for the estimation of this proportion.

c)For the t distribution with 14 degrees of freedom, calculate P(T < 2.624)!

An MCAT is an exam that university students take if they are interested in applying to med school. A professor at the University of Guelph quotes the following: "Because only a minority of university students actually take the MCAT, the scores overestimate the ability of a typical university student. The mean MCAT score is about 508, but I think that if all students took the test, the mean score would be no more than 450". This professor gave the test to a random sample of 500 students in Ontario, and found that these students had a mean score of x = 461.

a) Is this good evidence against the claim that the mean for all students is no more than 450? For the purpose of this example, let us assume that the population standard deviation σ of MCAT scores in our Ontario population is 100.

b) would this statistically significant result be practically significant?

b) Would this statistically significant result be significant in a practical sense?

1. We have used quantitative techniques to explore questions about whether groups differ and whether variables are related. Please provide a business example for each (differences and relationships) that you might explore in your own profession. Are there business questions that do not fall into one of those groupings that you would like to test?

2. True or false? Regression helps us determine cause and effect. Explain your answer.

3. Imagine you conduct an experiment to test whether a sample of MBA students performs better in BUS 601 after having taken a course in Excel. Of these students, you are also able to group them according to who uses Excel in their jobs and who does not. Using best practices in experimentation described in class (also explained in the various Harvard Business readings), how would you conduct the experiment and draw your conclusions?

4. Please evaluate the correlation matrix below (see Canvas for matrix), assuming stock price is the response variable in a series of multiple regression equations you plan to run. If you are using this as a diagnostic tool, what are you looking for? If this was your data, how would you proceed?

5. Please describe three things you learned in this class that you believe will make you a more informed consumer of business data and statistical reporting.

A. The countries of Western Europe have greater proportions of immigrants on welfare than are found in the US. Discuss why this difference exists between the US and Western Europe. B. Define the brain drain. Give two separate causes of the brain drain. Further, identify all parties who benefit from the brain drain.

2. The Dean of Students at the University of Waterloo wanted to estimate the proportion of students who are willing to report cheating by fellow students. So, her staff surveyed the 172 students currently enrolled in the introduction to biology class. The students were asked, “Imagine that you witness two students cheating on a quiz. Would you tell the professor?” 19 of the surveyed students responded “yes.” (11 points total)
a. Using these data, calculate the 90% confidence interval for the proportion of all students at the University of Waterloo that would report cheating. (4 points)
b. Interpret the confidence interval from part “a” in a sentence. Interpret in terms of percentages, rather than proportions. (4 points)
c. Is it appropriate to use these data to estimate the proportion of all students at the university that would report cheating? Why or why not? (3 points)

Who Pays, who Provides and who Measures US Healthcare?

The costs of healthcare are higher in the United States compared to any other developed country in the world, but this does not equate to best health status for our populations (OECD, 2018).

1. Who pays for US Healthcare?
2. Who provides US Healthcare Services?
3. Who measures healthcare service results (quality of life years (QALY) disability of life years (DALY)?

Please cite all resources used to obtain your answers.

Resources:

CDC. (2018). Health People 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/healthy_people/hp2020.htm

CMS. (2018). CMS Innovations. https://innovation.cms.gov/

NACCHO. (2018) Directory of Public Health Services. https://www.naccho.org/membership/lhd-directory

OECD. (2018). Health at a Glance (2017). http://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/health-at-a-glance-19991312.htm