You are the newly hired manager at The Great Nile Retail Store. The corporation has hundreds of brick & mortar locations across the United States, with thousands of employees. Your specific location employs dozens of employees. You sell pretty much everything, organized neatly into multiple departments, with eye-catching merchandise displays that contain the trendiest retail products.

Upon starting at your location, you learn that you have a good group of people working for you, but there have been consistent problems with motivation. Employees just don’t seem to “go the distance.” They do just barely what’s expected of them, and not one thing more.

Given the extremely competitive retail environment, and the fact that “Amazon” is crushing the competition, you decide you must change how employees behave. It’s clear that you’ll need them to do amazing things to remain competitive in this environment!

Prepare a response to the following questions:

1. Identify one motivation theory we discussed in class that you could use as the basis of your action to take. Discuss and develop a working definition of that theory.
2. Using the theory you chose as your basis, describe how you would go about motivating employees. What actions would you take to create a motivating work environment for your staff?

A recent National Science Foundation (NSF) survey indicates that more than 20% of the staff in American research and development laboratories is foreign. Results of the study have been used for pushing legislation aimed at controlling the number of foreign workers in the United States. An organization of foreign-born scientists wants to prove that the NSF survey results do not reflect the true percentage of foreign workers in the U.S. labs. The organization collects a sample of 5,000 laboratory workers in all major labs in the country and finds that 876 are foreign.

a). At 5% level of significance, is there sufficient evidence to conclude that the NSF study overestimated the percentage of foreigners in American laboratories? Your conclusion must be in terms of the P-Value as well as setting up a Rejection Region. Show work.

b). Which statistical distribution should be applied in this situation and why? Explain carefully.

c). What type of error is possible and describe this error in terms of the problem.

d). Based on a 95% confidence level, what is the best case and worst case scenario regarding the percentage of foreigners in American laboratories?

e). Carefully interpret this interval estimation.

f). Using the results of part (d), explain carefully whether or not there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the NSF study overestimated the percentage of foreigners in American laboratories? Explain carefully.

Ratio of Liabilities to Stockholders' Equity

The Craft Bin, a major competitor of The Building Store in the home improvement business, operates over 1,600 stores. Craft Bin recently reported the following balance sheet data (in millions):

a. Determine the total stockholders' equity at the end of Years 2 and 1.

b. Determine the ratio of liabilities to stockholders' equity for Year 2 and Year 1. Round your answers to two decimal places.

c. Based on (b), which is true regarding the risk to the creditors?
_________________ (increased, decreased, or no change)

d. The Building Store, Inc., is the world's largest home improvement retailer and one of the largest retailers in the United States based on net sales volume. The Building Store operates over 2,200 Building stores that sell a wide assortment of building materials and home improvement and lawn and garden products.

The Building Store reported the following balance sheet data (in millions)

For Year 2, the creditors of which company are more at risk?
The Craft Bin

In this assignment, you are asked to begin to pull together the marketing concepts we have been discussing and to think ahead. Entrepeneurship is really a concept of evolution, an idea that often begins as a small business. Before it became Walmart was we know it, Sam Walton's store began in a small town in Arkansas. A similar history exists for McDonald's -- a small hamburger stand in California. In the auto industry, the Dodge Brothers really did exist.

Look around you. Perhaps you know someone who owns or manages a small business. Think about how they bring products (or services) to the marketplace. What are the risks?

Small business is a critical aspect of distribution in the United States. If you were given $150,000 to start a small business, what would it be? What would you do first?

Some of you may be fans of The Shark Tank (on ABC, some cable channels, and Hulu). What are the questions the sharks ask before investing? Other program with a similar concept but different theme are on CNBC. Think about why those questions are important.

Tell me about your small business idea and what you would do to get if off the ground? Be sure to explain your business concept and what you would use the investor's money to accomplish.

Widely recognised as one of the best airports in the world, Changi Airport provides excellent connectivity to the Asia Pacific region, making Singapore a vibrant aviation hub of choice. Changi Airport is served by many leading airlines and is an important hub for airline alliances such as Star Alliance and Oneworld, providing an important connection from ASEAN cities to ones in Europe and the United States.

There are currently 4 terminals in operations at Changi Airport and with the addition of the fifth terminal that is scheduled to be operational in 2030, Changi Airport will be able to cater to more than 135 million passengers per year.

As an intern at the airport, you have been provided with a set of aircraft traffic data (from January 1991 to December 2019) that shows the number of aircraft arrival and departure for each month and are required to analyse and do a projection of the aircraft traffic up to December 2021. This information will help the authority to decide if the pace of constructing Terminal 5 needs to be accelerated for completion ahead of 2030.

(a) Discuss which time period of the record should be used for this forecasting. Recommend an appropriate time series model to forecast the monthly aircraft traffic up to December 2021 with justifications.

(b) From Question 3(a)’s conclusion, determine the monthly forecast for aircraft traffic up to December 2021. Show the steps in calculating the forecast.

Case Study

Instructions

Recent studies support the potential of a drug that is derived from the metal iridium to effectively treat cancer. This experimental drug, Drug ZL105, has not been tested for efficacy and toxicity. Imagine that you are the one responsible for approving or denying the use of this drug within the United States. Your job is to propose the testing that is needed for this drug to be determined as safe and effective for the treatment of cancer in humans. In your research and discussion, you should address the questions below.

1. What model(s) will you use for testing (i.e., animal, cell cultures, computer simulations)? Explain the choice of model, and provide support for the reliability of the model. Discuss the pros and cons of your choice.
2. In determining the safety and effectiveness of the drug, would it be necessary to test efficacy, toxicity, and lethality? Explain what each of these tests are for and whether or not one or more of the tests are necessary for your determination.
3. Provide your thoughts on what information you hope to gather from your tests and whether or not the same protocol should be used for various categories of products such as drugs, cosmetics, and herbal medicines.

Your case study assignment should be three to four pages in length and utilize at least three reliable references. Use APA style guidelines in writing this assignment, following APA rules for formatting, quoting, paraphrasing, citing, and referencing.

Below are data for countries with fast and slow growth rates over two different time periods. Construct a bar chart for each country in both categories. In other words, you will end up with four different bar charts, two for each of the two categories of the countries representing both time periods.

One of the most frequently estimated equations in the macroeconomics growth literature are so-called convergence regressions. To investigate this matter, you collect data from 104 countries for the sample period 1960-1990 and estimate the following relationship:

g₆₀₉₀ = 0.020 – 0.360 × g_pop + 0.004 × Educ – 0.053×RelProd₆₀

where g₆₀₉₀ is the growth rate (in percentage) of GDP per worker for the 1960-1990 sample period, RelProd₆₀ is the initial starting level of GDP per worker relative to the United States in 1960, g_pop is the average population growth rate of the country, and Educ is educational attainment in years for 1985.

(a) What is the effect of an increase of 5 years in educational attainment? What would happen if a country could implement policies to cut population growth by one percent?

(b) It has been suggested to you to interact education with the initial condition to test for additional effects of education on growth. To test for this possibility, you estimate the following regression:

g₆₀₉₀ = 0.015 -0.323 × g_pop + 0.005 × Educ –0.051×RelProd₆₀ –0.0028 × (Educ.RelProd₆₀)

Write down the effect of an additional year of education on growth. West Germany has a value for RelProd60 of 0.57, while Brazil's value is 0.23. What is the predicted growth rate effect of adding one year of education in both countries?

Write initial post needs to be a minimum of 250 words.

• What was the most interesting topic from this module, something you want to know more about?
• Was there anything in the module that left you with specific questions you feel work not answered by the material?
• Was there something in the module that you felt was misrepresented or that runs counter to your personal experience with either business or unions?

Modules Topic

Outline of Key Contents � Why unions remain insecure as institutions and what they have and haven’t been able to do about this insecurity �

Right-to-work laws and why unions don’t like them �

How the dues checkoff arrangement works in practice and why most employers and unions haven’t made it a crucial point of controversy �

Obligations that labor contracts impose on unions �

Why employers often want “management rights” clauses and why some people think that such clauses aren’t necessary �

The two quite different theories of management rights: residual and trusteeship �

Why, although common in some other countries, codetermination has been very rare in the United States, and why this latter situation may finally be changing �

Why unions have historically resisted both employee stock ownership plans and quality of work life programs and why these stances, too, may at last be changing

Ann is interviewing for job at GRG, Inc.. Bob is the company's hiring manager and is in charge of conducting interviews.

Ann informs Bob that she is in the United States for the next year with an appropriate visa. The job that she is seeking has been advertised as a short-term position to fill a vacancy pending the return of a permanent employee. Without question, Ann is qualified for the position and will remain in the country for a time after the permanent employee returns.

Bob inquires about Ann's national origin after she informed him about the visa. Specifically, Bob asked Ann what country she is from and how many languages she speaks. Bob also made a casual remark about her country's history of "civil unrest" and "history of abusive treatment to women". Bob further informed Ann, during the interview, that he likes to keep up with "foreign affairs" and "contemporary world events". Ann was not offended by Bob's comments or inquiries at the interview.

Ann was not hired for the position. She learned that GRG, Inc. hired a Caucasian female, approximately the same age as she who was born and raised in Illinois. Ann has filed charges of discrimination based on ancestry / national origin with the EEOC. What are her arguments? What are the applicable defenses that GRG, Inc. can raise? Who wins / why not?