Discuss the impact that the CEO has made on the organization thus far and why.

Each assignment in this course focuses on a different portion of an industry analysis. The activities and discussion questions serve as an introduction to the process of critically evaluating a corporation, one of its direct competitors, and the industry as a whole which constitute a thorough and complete industry analysis. Your MB609 Capstone Project will be a complete industry analysis including a publicly traded company, its industry, and two of its competitors. (Be sure that you keep your textbook from this course as well as all of the projects you write.)

This Industry Analysis project (MB601) is an introductory project to prepare you for the Capstone Project (MB609). At this time you will only analyze a publicly traded company and its industry (none of its competitors will be analyzed). To begin this project, select a publicly traded corporation to study. In other words, you should be able to purchase stock in the corporation you select. The corporation must be large enough for the business and trade press to have written about it, but not so large that the amount of available information is overwhelming making your ability to suggest innovative recommendations for the corporation’s survival and success. Consequently, make sure that you do not choose one in which any and all potential strategies and recommendations have been discussed at length in the press. A table of contents and a bibliography listing only those works that you cited in your analysis are required. Your Stand-Alone Project responses should be both grammatically and mechanically correct, and formatted in the same fashion as the project itself. If there is a Part A, your response should identify a Part A, etc. In addition, you must appropriately cite all resources used in your response and document in a bibliography using APA style. (200 points) (A 10-page response is required for the combination of Parts A through H.)

First, collect the following documents and information.

1. The corporation’s annual report

2. At least 15 business or trade articles concerning the current status of your corporation and predictions of its future success

3. Information on your corporation’s CEO and Board of Directors

4. Information about the industry in general, including major players, consumers,

trends, etc.

Next, thoroughly read the information and documents you collected on your company

and its industry. As you read, make notes on the topics listed below, synthesize the information, and analyze the current state of the corporation and its industry. This synthesis and analysis process is essential to build your conceptual skills which are to be further developed as you proceed through the MBA Program. It is the goal of an MBA program to build your conceptual skills which are required for management positions which oversee a variety of departments, specialists, and projects.

Following the outline below, write your analysis of your corporation and its industry.

Part A CEO Profile and Assessment of Effectiveness

1. Profile your CEO’s qualifications (experience, education, etc.) as well as why this person was selected and the circumstances that created the CEO vacancy.

2. Students should relate the CEO’s qualifications as it applies to the type of strategy the company has elected to follow and the type of CEO that typically is successful in achieving that strategy.

3. Discuss the impact that the CEO has made on the organization thus far and why.

Part B Board of Directors Profile and Analysis: This section includes a wealth of information regarding the role that the Board of Directors plays in your organization.

1. You should discuss the manner in which the Board of Directors is nominated and selected, the way in which the Board is organized and why, and the way in which the Board utilizes or matches the trends in corporate governance that are listed in the text.

2. You should also evaluate and identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Board of Director’s composition with respect to their affiliation (who they really work for and that company’s relationship to your corporation), diversity, experience in the industry and the company, insiders/outsiders, etc.

3. Also, evaluate the changes in members to the Board in the last five years. If there have been changes, do those changes (new board members with different attributes and affiliations) suggest a change in your corporation’s strategy, target markets, etc.? Are these changes in any way indicative of a new strategic move?

Part C Industry Assessment

1. Evaluate your corporation’s competitive position within its industry using Porter’s model: threat of new entrants, suppliers, buyers, rivalry, substitutes, and other stakeholders.

2. You should include a discussion of the other factors considered crucial to the industry’s survival. Suggestions include industry dynamics, industry structure, life cycle, strategic groups, and other elements as necessary.

Part D Direct and Indirect Competition: Using the information provided in your text related to competitive intensity and the types of competitor information available, identify the competition with respect to your corporation. Identify the nature of their competitive relationship – similarity in products, strategy, etc. At least two (2) competitors for each category should be discussed.

Part E Internal Strengths and Weaknesses: Evaluate your corporation using the VRIO provided in your textbook.

Part F External Opportunities and Threats: Evaluate your corporation’s competitive environment for opportunities and threats using the TOWS matrix.

Part G Overall Competitive Position: Briefly evaluate the state of your corporation’s competitive position within its industry.

Part H Recommendations

1. Make two (2) recommendations for increasing your corporation’s shareholder wealth in the future. This includes ensuring long term survival as well as meeting and exceeding your shareholders expectations for the generation of their wealth in the short term and the long term.

2. Your two (2) recommendations should be well supported by information contained in your written analysis, and your supporting information should be specifically identified in this section to justify your recommendations.

3. Your two (2) recommendations should be accompanied by your expectations for your corporation and its industry if your recommendations were adopted. Your expectations should include the impact to the industry structure, the likely response of competitors, and both positive and negative consequences should be identified.

Define, describe and illustrate the decomposition of ROI and ROE. Form numerical illustrations to clarify your discussion.

Research the decomposition analysis of performance ratio and then be able to apply the ratios. You will need to respond to and explain the following:

  1. Define,describe and illustrate the decomposition of ROI and ROE. Form numerical illustrations to clarify your discussion.
  2. Extend the basic analysis to show the connection of this decomposition analysis to the common-size income statement. Explain and illustrate clearly the connection and the value of the analysis,
  3. Using the decomposition of ROI and ROE, form this analysis on a study company and a comparison company using the most recent three years of financialdata. Some potential companies could be: Lowes and Home Depot, Toyota and Honda, PepsiCo and Coca Cola. Review the referenced paper by Prendergast (2006). Describe the research question being addressed. Discuss the methods used and the conclusions reached by the study.

Support your paper with a minimum of five (5) external resources In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.

Describe the organization, forces, challenges, strategies, evolution and best supported proposal.

· If you don’t know a candidate company to select, retail is often a good choice; Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Best Buy for example.

Write the following five sections about the company you chose in and try to keep it around 10 pages of core content, single spaced of 12-point type. These 10 pages does NOT include the cover page, references and other supplemental material.  You may follow this with appendices if you wish.  Appendices will be read only as needed by the reader and the evaluation is not based upon them. Respond to the bulleted points where relevant and use your judgment as to their relative importance for the business that you have selected. Describe the organization, forces, challenges, strategies, evolution and best supported proposal in your own words! Make sure to use references to back up your assertions!

1. Business Model: Describe key aspects of its business model.

Keeping the following questions in mind will help your response.

· What’s the name of the company, how large is it, what industry segment is it in, and what does the company do?

· Is the company primarily a product or a service business, or some kind of hybrid?

· What are its offerings (i.e. its products and/or services)? What is its market position? What are its value propositions (perhaps offer-specific)?

· How does the business earn revenue (including the pricing of its offerings) and make a profit?

· What other features of its market model, operational model, or financial model are significant, unusual, or distinctive?

· Does the organization follow a cloud computing model? Are there aspects of those models in the organization that you choose?

2. Competitive Forces and Challenges: Consider each of Porter’s five Competitive Forces.  For each of the five forces, list and describe the relevant actual competitive challenges (if any) that the company faces (or is likely to face soon).  Also list and describe competitive challenges the company faces (or is likely to face soon) as a result of other changes in the business environment (e.g. economic, regulatory, etc.)

3. Competitive Strategies: For the most significant competitive forces/challenges that the company faces, describe the company’s competitive strategies for addressing that challenge.  If you are unsure, you can discuss how the company has (or similar companies have) addressed that challenge in the past, or how you believe it should address the challenge.  What approach will the organization need to take in order to sustain an advantage; or will it need to change approaches? Indicate whether you believe the strategy will work or not and why.

4. Business Model Evolution: Discuss any other ideas you have for how the company’s business model could evolve, and what might drive the business to evolve in that way:

· How might the company enhance its products and services, and why?

· How might the organization improve internal processes to become more efficient or effective?

· How might the company expand into new related products and services, new territories, or new market segments, and why?

· How might the company extend into new lines of business or new business models? Why would they do so? (Include mostly non-e-commerce initiatives if possible)

5. Best IT-Supported Proposal: Identify the best proposed idea you have listed in Section 4 above that can also be supported by IT in a substantial way. For that proposal, provide the following:

· Justification: Explain why you believe this is a particularly good proposal — i.e. how and why will it enable the company to more effectively compete?

· Role of IT: Describe the most essential ways in which IT could be used to support the proposal.

Describe a topic in developmental psychology that you would be interested in studying and how you would use your chosen research method to study that topic.

Developmental psychologists employ many types of research methods in order to study development and changes in individuals over time. In this assignment, you will explore one of these research methods in-depth and create a short presentation on your chosen research method.

Select one of the following research methods to explore:

  • Experiment
  • Correlation
  • Case Study
  • Observation
  • Interviews / Qualitative

Create a short PowerPoint presentation (approximately 6-8 slides) in which you:

  1. describe your chosen research method
  2. explain under what circumstances this research method would be used in the field of psychology
  3. identify at least one benefit of using this method, as well as at least one drawback of using this method
  4. describe a topic in developmental psychology that you would be interested in studying and how you would use your chosen research method to study that topic. Be specific! Describe who your population would be, how you would collect your data, how you would analyze your data, any independent/dependent variables, etc. Demonstrate your understanding of this research method.

You must cite a minimum of one outside source within your presentation. Include APA-formatted in-text citations within your slides, and also include a slide at the end with a list of references in APA format.

Keep in mind that I’m not looking for you to copy and paste information from the reading/websites and stick it into your slides. You can use a direct quote if you feel you need to, but it must have quotation marks around it to indicate that it is a direct quote. Everything else will need to be in your own words (paraphrase), followed by an in-text citation to indicate where the information came from. I want to see your writing, not what you’ve copied and pasted from other writers.

Discuss your plans for developing formal job descriptions for the employees at the second shop.

Read “Case 2-2: Performance Management at KS Cleaners” from the textbook. Answer questions #1, #2, and #3 (located at the end of the case study and also as follows).

Question #1: In the context of KSC, critically evaluate the availability of any prerequisites to implementing a performance management process.

Question #2: Discuss your plans for developing formal job descriptions for the employees at the second shop.

Question #3: Explain key features of developing performance plans for the employees. Provide examples of factors you would consider in developing such plans for the dry cleaner.

You will need to include a brief introduction of the case and critically evaluate the current situation of KSC. It is important to display adequate analysis of the case and integrate sufficient support from scholarly resources throughout the assignment. Use suitable headings and subheadings to organize the work in an appropriate manner.

Write a summary and analysis for “Who are you and what are you doing here” by Mark Edmundson.

Write a summary and analysis for “Who are you and what are you doing here” by Mark Edmundson. Your audience is educated peers who have read this article, and are wondering what you think about it. Your rhetorical analysis must include a summary of what the article argues, and also an analysis and evaluation of how well the article makes its points. Your essay should include these elements: -the context of the article -a clear statement of “the gist” of the article -a description of the key claims of the article -1-2 relevant examples (direct quotations or paraphrases) from the article As no summary is neutral, you must weave an analytical thread throughout your summary that suggests to the reader your judgment of the value of the article. You might consider including: -examine how well the article appeals to its intended audience -evaluate the author’s use of evidence -identify the author’s purpose or motivation for writing -point out the gaps and flaws in the article’s argument

Discuss the challenges a business may face if they implement the features of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as noted in Chapter 1 of the text.

from Chapter 1 and 2 1.) Discuss the challenges a business may face if they implement the features of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as noted in Chapter 1 of the text. 2.) In December 2017, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the nation’s busiest by volume, suffered a power failure for a period of 11 hours. Thousands of flights were disrupted and authorities initially left many without answers. Research this event, Atlanta Airport 2017 Blackout, and discuss the vulnerabilities, threats, and security failures as a result of this incident.

In a post, address all of the following questions and provide evidence from the sources to support your claims.

In a post, address all of the following questions and provide evidence from the sources to support your claims. Remember to cite the source and the page number when you paraphrase or provide a quotation: How did Galton define eugenics, what did he think it could be used to accomplish, how did he foresee the role of the state in achieving eugenic ends, what was his proposed relationship between eugenics and religious institutions, and how did he define “superior” human beings?

Describe an episode of deviance on social media.

Take a moment to reflect on your experiences with social media – Facebook or Twitter – before answering the following questions: Describe an episode of deviance on social media. (Please avoid deeply offensive incidents that will upset yourself OR classmates) How does the context of social media contribute to this incident? What sociological theory best accounts for this episode? Why do you think that theory is the best means of explaining the incident?