Business

It is critical for a good economist to read widely and deeply. I have selected a number of chapters from the books that have most challenged me and shaped my own thinking about Economics and research more generally to whet your appetites.     You are assigned four book chapters to read and will need to reflect on and write about each one. I have selected these are they cover a wide array of topics in Economics and are from books that I have really enjoyed and have influenced how I think. We will discuss these in the Live Discussions as well.   These are all provided on Blackboard. The reflections should focus not on the quality of the book chapter as such, but rather on how the book has influenced the manner in which you think about Economics, what you understand about Economics and how you might approach the study of Economics. If it has not done any of these things, that’s fine too. But then make clear why you did not find it insightful or interesting. The following questions can be used as a guide: What is the main point of the chapter? What is the central idea it is trying to get across to the reader? Do you think the book achieved its aim in communicating this idea or ideas? What did the author do well? What could have been improved? Don’t be afraid to be critical!  What do you know about Economics or Economists or the activity or “doing” Economics that you didn’t know before? Has the book changed the way you think about Economics and studying Economics? Why or why not? What has changed in your thinking? If I only assign one book to students in this course next year, would you recommend I choose the book from which this chapter was taken that you read? Why or why not? Are you going to read the rest of the book?   These questions are provided as a guide to your thinking and you needn’t answer them explicitly.    Marking of these assignments is as follows. You get 3 points for every assignment submitted. That’s right! Just for submitting! YAWYR 1 will be marked out of 8 and feedback provided.    Some general marking guidelines for writing assignments: I am looking for depth of thought. Evidence in your writing that you spent time and energy thinking about the chapter, its message, its approach and also your own thinking as a response to what you read. Writing “This is a good book.” Or “I like this book.” are not good places to start. Read, think, reflect, discuss with your colleagues, myself, your tutors. Then write. Grammar matters. Spelling matters. Correct referencing matters. Clarity matters. You will have had a lecture about writing. I suggest you consult that and the recommended readings from the lecture.

1B. Oral History Interview (and Report) about Paid and Unpaid Work Prior to the 1970s/1980s If you elect to do an oral history interview, you will undertake a much different set of assignment activities. Instead of doing secondary research (i.e., reading about research done by others), you will do primary research by gathering first-hand information from the person you interview. In addition to arranging for and conducting the interview, you will need to prepare a written report of the interview. Follow these steps to prepare your interview and written report: To begin, identify a woman, a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) person, and/or a gender-nonconforming/transgender person who would be able and willing to participate in an interview. They might be someone in your own family, a family friend, or a person suggested by a friend or colleague. Ideally, the person you interview should be able to comfortably talk, in some detail, about their work at home and their work for pay before the 1970s or 1980s. Once you have identified a potential interviewee, contact that person to determine if they would be willing to participate in an interview. Complete the Recruitment Form for Assignment 1B. The recruitment form will help you explain the interview process to your interview subject. Be sure to describe the purpose of the interview and let the subject know that this activity is part of an AU course assignment. Review the ethical obligations you have as a researcher. First, tell the interviewee that you will guarantee their anonymity, which means that you will not write up the interview in any way that would reveal the interviewee’s name or any personal details that would allow them to be identified. Second, assure the interviewee that you will treat all information they provide as confidential, which means that you will not share this information with family members, friends, or coworkers. Finally, tell the interviewee that they have the right to refuse to answer any question asked. Should the subject then agree to an interview, you can arrange for a time and place that is convenient for them. When you begin the interview, reiterate your promises on these three points. Complete three copies of the Consent Form for Assignment 1B. Review the content of the form with your interview subject and, if they agree to the interview, have them sign and date all copies. Leave one copy with them, mail the hard copy or email a scanned copy to your tutor (contact your tutor for a mailing address), and keep a copy for your files. Do not conduct the interview until you have a signed consent form. Before the interview, prepare a list of questions that you intend to ask the subject about their experiences with work in the past. Your questions should be general and open-ended so that your interviewee has plenty of opportunity to respond. Oral history interviews differ from other types of interviews in that they involve less-frequent and less-directed questioning. Prepare a list of broad questions that will encourage the person to talk at length, in their own way, about their own life and work history. In developing your interview questions, reflect on the assigned readings for Unit 1 and on the historical situation of women and marginalized people in Canada. You may want to ask questions that touch on the issues below. Feel free, however, to develop your own questions. Can you tell me about the paid work you have done throughout your life, starting with your first job? What about the work you have done at home? What can you tell me about that, starting from the time you were a young adult? What has been the most satisfying work you have done during your life? What made it so satisfying? What special memories of work do you have? Are there particular stories or events that stand out? Looking back over your lifetime, how has work changed for women, transgender people, LGB people, racialized people, and/or Indigenous people? When you meet for the interview, be sure to thank the subject for participating and for volunteering their time. You should also repeat the assurances you gave earlier concerning confidentiality, anonymity, and the right to refuse to answer questions. If you want to record the interview in any way, you must ask for and obtain permission to do so before you start, and you must respect the interviewee’s wishes in this matter. Note that recording is done primarily for purposes of accuracy and that any recordings made will be deleted once you have completed your report. The interviewee might ask for a copy of the interview recording, and if so, you can offer to send the recording to them once you have completed your written report. You might also offer to provide them with a copy of your written account of the interview. If the participant prefers that the interview not be recorded, you will need to take notes as they talk. Begin by asking easy, conversational questions about the interviewee’s background, such as where they grew up, their family, how they lived, and so on. You can then ask the more general questions that you developed for the interview. Let the subject speak at length as much as possible, and listen carefully for any issues you want to clarify or follow up on. At some points in the interview, you may need to ask brief questions to encourage the interviewee to continue telling their story. For example, as they describe the paid work they did over their life, you may need to prompt them to continue by asking about the type of job they did next. At other points, you may want to ask clarifying or follow-up questions to ensure that you understand what they have said. You can ask these questions at points where natural breaks in the conversation occur, or you can ask them at the end of the interview. It is important to go into the interview with an open mind. Do not assume or expect your interviewee to have certain views or experiences. Listen carefully and learn as much as you can. Ask questions that will help you understand more about their life and point of view. For example, if your subject has a different view than you about a certain issue, ask them why they feel this way. When the interview is completed, sit down as soon as possible and develop more extensive notes based on your recollection of the discussion. It is crucial that you do this immediately; otherwise, important details will be forgotten. Following the interview, be sure to send the interviewee a thank-you note. Remember to send along any promised recordings or notes from the interview as well. Sharing your recording or interview notes also gives your subject an opportunity to correct or expand on anything that they said. Once you have completed the interview and follow-up, begin preparing your written report. Review your interview recording and/or notes while reflecting on the unit’s assigned readings. Your written report should not be a word-for-word transcript of the interview; rather, it should convey a concise story of the interviewee’s working life. Try to identify the key events and/or issues that emerge from the interview. Include direct quotes from your interviewee to illustrate the issues and events that were important to them. Ideally, your report should provide the reader with a sense of who the interviewee is, the types of work they have done, and their feelings and insights about their paid and unpaid work throughout their lifetime. Your report needs to reference and discuss three of the key concepts from Unit 1 in relation to your interview. As an appendix to your report, attach a list of the questions you asked in the interview and a brief summary (one paragraph) of how the interview went. Here you can note what worked well and what you would do differently another time. When you have completed your oral history interview report, ensure that you make or keep a copy for your records. Upload your assignment to the assignment drop box and submit it to your tutor for marking. If for some reason you are unable to do this, contact your tutor about using regular post.

Must be at least 8 sentences long. 5 basic conflict management styles: Accommodating, Avoiding, Negotiating, Forcing, and Collaborating.  The text makes it seem obvious that the collaborating conflict style is “best”, but it is not always possible to find a win-win solution to every conflict (here is a hint though:  win-win is often possible when two or more parties work together over an extended amount of time, but may not be possible in every isolated instant or decision).  For this discussion, think of a time when you have encountered a conflict.  What conflict management styles were used in the interactions?  What approach did you take? Did the conflict get resolved to your satisfaction?  What could have gone differently that may have changed the outcome (either on your end, or on their end)?

Requirements: Ø  Prepare a spreadsheet analysis of your two companies for the two most recent years using the Dupont analysis framework outlined in the powerpoint slides 2-37 in the Module 4 powerpoints. Ø  Use Porter’s five forces to analyze the competitive landscape of the industry and your two companies. Ø  Using all of the data from the Dupont analysis, discuss the performance of each of your two companies and compare the relative performance of the two companies. Ø  From the perspective of a potential investor or manager, prepare recommendations based on your analysis.

Read Chapters 9 Defining Risk Perception, 10 Understanding Basic Risk Management Principles, and 11 Developing an Activity-Based Safety System, the article by Geller, Leadership Lessons for OSHA Professionals, and view the YouTube TED Talk, Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace. Next, answer by explaining how leadership and management can engage employees in safety-related activities whereby employees will accept their safety responsibilities. GIVE EXAMPLES OF THE SAFETY ACTIVITIES.  Please adhere to the following directions: Use the document Rubric Additional Rules and Craap Test as your writing guideline. Do not use the textbook, do not use Geller’s article as a reference, the video Building a “Psychologically Safe Workplace by Amy Edmonson, opinion articles, or opinion activist writings (ramblings) as references in your paper  Have a minimum of THREE references Use credible references Submit your response in a Word document Double-spaced the paper Write a minimum of 550 words Omit flowery language Attachments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8  (Links to an external site.)

Assignment Content You have been hired as a business process consultant for a fast food restaurant to strategically reorganize, standardize, and improve their service processes through the use of technology. Discuss how you will help to better utilize expensive resources to improve the restaurant’s strategic position and operational effectiveness. Write a 1,050- to 1,400-word paper in which you identify the relationship between the restaurant’s current strategic positon and its operational effectiveness. Discuss the business process improvements necessary to produce and deliver the restaurant’s products and services in the following key areas: Business strategy. Operations strategy. Process architecture and operating policies. Discuss how the use of technology can be used to improve the restaurant’s s overall effectiveness. Evaluate the relationship between the restaurant’s strategy and the design of its managerial operations. Research a competitor in a similar market and compare and contrast how strategic positioning of the restaurant’s product will make the company more successful than the competition.

Answer  2.What would be the cost for Atento of one productive hour of an agent in the Sao Bernardo do Campo center? a.How does turnover affect this unit cost? What would be the cost of a productive hour if Atento managed to reduce the turnover to half of its current level? b. How does absenteeism affect this unit cost? What would be the cost of a productive hour if Atento managed to reduce absenteeism to half of its current level?

Review your purpose, audience, and genre. Is your purpose clear to your target audience? Should you modify your chosen purpose to appeal to your audience? Criteria are standards of value. They contain categories and judgments, as in good fuel economy, good reliability, or powerful use of light and shade in a painting. Some categories, such as price, have clearly implied judgments (low price), but make sure that your criteria refer implicitly or explicitly to a standard of value. Examine your criteria from your audience s point of view. Which criteria are most important in evaluating your subject? Will your readers agree that the criteria you select are indeed the most important ones? Will changing the order in which you present your criteria make your evaluation more convincing? Organize your essay around your criteria. Generally, this means one criterion per paragraph. Include both positive and negative evaluations of your subject. If all of your judgments are positive, your evaluation will sound like an advertisement. If all of your judgments are negative, your readers may think you are too critical. Be sure to include supporting evidence for each criterion. Without any data or support, your evaluation will be just an opinion that will not persuade your reader. Avoid overgeneralizing in your claims. If you are evaluating only three software programs, you cannot say that Lotus 1-2-3 is the best business program around. You can say only that it is the best among the group or the best in the particular class that you measured. Unless your goal is humor or irony, compare subjects that belong in the same class. Comparing a Ford Focus to a BMW is absurd because they are not similar cars in terms of cost, design, or purpose. Is your use of MLA format correct? Double check. If you are citing other people s data or quoting sources, check to make sure your summaries and data are accurate. Signal the major divisions in your evaluation to your reader using clear transitions, key words, and paragraph hooks. At the beginning of new paragraphs or sections in your essay, let your reader know where you are going. Revise sentences for directness and clarity. Read your work out loud to find minor mistakes. Edit your evaluation for correct spelling, appropriate word choice,

Assignment:  Read the Sullivan Hospital System in Part 4, Selected Cases, of the textbook.  Answer, discuss, and examine the implications of the following questions:       1. What is your critique of the Sullivan Hospital system visioning process?       2. What interventions would you recommend and why?      3. For your preferred intervention, develop an action plan.

Assignment: You realize that this is a good time to discuss communication options for the project that supports your communications management plan. Create a memo to the IT Department and Communications Department that discusses the following: 1) Describes the methods of communications that are required for the project 2) Why they are important to the success of the project 3) What is needed from the IT Department and Communications Department to support these needs Create a memo (in proper memo format).  Required length is 500 words narrative for elements (1), (2), and (3) above. 3 references in APA format required.