Make two evidence-based recommendations as to how your company may improve their strategy globally to ensure continued success as we emerge from the pandemic.
Part 2 (900 words).
Make two evidence-based recommendations as to how your company may improve their strategy globally to ensure continued success as we emerge from the pandemic. In this section we encourage you to be creative and thoughtful (but always underpinned with theory) about how your company may develop.
Areas that you may want to consider, but are not limited to, are:
Sustainability
CSR
Ethical business practices
New consumer needs
New products
Phygitalisation
The use of AI
The use of data
The use of robotics
New markets
The report should contain substantial evidence of wider academic reading. A minimum of 20 peer reviewed academic journal articles should be used.
Word Length:
A maximum of 3000 words – please ensure that the word count is listed on your coursework. There is no additional allowance. This excludes tables, models and the reference list etc.
The word counts for section A and B, listed above are a guide only – it is essential that you do not exceed the maximum allowance of 3000 words.
Assignment Structure:
Your structure the report as follows:
Short introduction to your company (you should not include a long company history or company overview)
Identify your company’s two most important international markets of operation
Assignment Title: Analysis of International Marketing Strategy
Select ONE company of your choice from the list below. Your company may be any of the following:
A manufacturer
A social media operator
An advertising agency
A service provider (includes all service sectors such as healthcare/ airlines/ financial institutions/ food and beverages etc.)
An online retailer
An offline retailer
An online and offline retailer
The following areas must be discussed:
Part 1 (1600 words):
a) Identify your chosen company’s two key international marketing strategies. In this section you should identify what, in your opinion, are the two key strategies. Your company will most likely have many strategies, but you should focus on the two that you think are their main competitive advantages.
Areas that you may want to consider, but are not limited to are:
The use of technology
Customer segments
Being in a blue ocean
Product innovations
Brand strategy
Use of data
Countries of operation
b) Identify your company’s two most important international markets of operation. You should identify which are the two most important markets for your company and support your chosen markets with evidence (you must choose 2 separate countries).
evaluate the study according to research design methods, procedures and study results
Activity 2
Evaluating a Quantitative Research Study
Examine the study- Harris, M. F., Chan, B. C., Laws, R. A., Williams, A. M., Davies, G. P., Jayasinghe, U. W., … Milat, A. (2013). The impact of a brief lifestyle intervention delivered by generalist community nurses (CN SNAP trial). BMC Public Health, 13(1). doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-375
In this assessment, you will evaluate the study according to research design methods, procedures and study results, for example, see Evaluating a Quantitative Study LoBiondo-Wood,& Haber (2018).
Suggested Reading
Chapter 7 & 8 LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2018). Nursing research: Methods and critical appraisal for evidence-based practice.(9th ed) St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Astroth, K. S., & Chung, S. Y. (2018). Focusing on the fundamentals: Reading quantitative research with a critical eye. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 45(3), 283-287. Retrieved from http://americansentinel.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.americansentinel.idm.oclc.org/docview/2063390700?accountid=169658
Additional Instructions:
All submissions should have a title page and reference page.
Utilize a minimum of two scholarly resources.
Adhere to grammar, spelling and punctuation criteria.
Adhere to APA compliance guidelines.
Adhere to the chosen Submission Option for Delivery of Activity guidelines.
Submission Options
Choose One: Instructions:
Paper 4 to 6-page paper. Include title and reference pages.
How do you think pre-disposed personality traits affects a person’s ability to lead and their decision-making processes?
This is a 1 page assignment. I don’t need any references
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp.
Take the MBTI . Based on your results, respond to the following:
How do you think pre-disposed personality traits affects a person’s ability to lead and their decision-making processes?
Does knowing the results of the MBTI test impact your leadership style? Can you compensate for certain characteristics that emerge from this test in your leadership decisions?
Some people critique the MBTI test arguing there are mixed results that emerge from it. Go online and briefly read through some of the critiques of the MBTI test. Do you agree or disagree with the critiques? Why or why not?
Effect of caffeinated chewing gum on anaerobic performance. Does the dosage elicit an effect?
Description
Effect of caffeinated chewing gum on anaerobic performance. Does the dosage elicit an effect? absorption times,
certain ingredients in certain caffeinated gum that could elicit and effect. What type of anaerobic performance
shows improvement and which ones may not.
Inlcude:
Introduction
Methodology
Discussion
Results
Conclusion
Is psychological distress impactful differently across ages and genders?
Overview of this Assessment
Lab Report Guidance session
recording (starts at about 10 minutes)
slides
The major assignment for HPS301/781 casts you into the role of a Research Psychologist. You will be required to analyse some data obtained from a research study and to write a report based on your findings. The assignment must be presented as a formal laboratory report (see example lab report on CloudDeakin and/or https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/reading-and-writing-for-science) and should contain an abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and reference sections. Given that this is a Research Methods unit, the assessment of your report will focus primarily on the results and discussion sections and this is reflected in the weighting of marks (see below).
Thus, the primary aims of this assignment are to:
Develop your skills in using appropriate statistical techniques to test a specific research question,
Broaden your understanding of research designs,
Develop your report writing skills; particularly the ability to report statistical results, the ability to interpret statistical results in the context of past research, and to integrate previous work into a structured argument.
A secondary aim is to apply the work you have been undertaking in HPS301/781 to a ‘real world’ problem in psychological research. Hopefully, you will come to appreciate the way we use statistical methods to help answer questions about important issues.
We will provide you with the data set early in the trimester (it is available now – see below), as well as information about the study methods, and specific research questions.
Your task will be to analyse the data and then write a lab report on the results. Thus, you will need to draw on the skills you have been developing over the course of the trimester. You can consult the Seminar Activity Instructions documents on CloudDeakin for help with analysing the data and interpreting your output. Furthermore, a Zoom session (date to be advised in a News post) will be scheduled closer to the due date for any student queries regarding the assignment.
The main focus of the assessment is on your ability to understand, analyse and interpret the appropriate statistical analyses to test the hypotheses and to report the results correctly. Overall, your ability to write a psychology laboratory report (following APA conventions) as a whole will be assessed. The necessary readings for AT1 can be found in the Lab Report section of the HPS301/781 CloudDeakin site. There is no need to go beyond these readings, but you are welcome to source additional readings if you want.
Submission
8pm, Friday, April 29th, submitted via CloudDeakin.
The assignment is to be submitted as a word document or pdf (.docx OR .pdf), as well as your output (can be a separate file or you can copy your output into your lab report at the end – call it an Appendix) to the CloudDeakin dropbox for the HPS301/781 site. The purpose of this is so we can see which analyses you have run in Jamovi, and if the analyses match the results.
The dropbox will activate closer to the due date.
Word limit
For this task you must submit a lab report that includes the sections outlined below. The word limit is 2,000 words (excluding your Abstract, Reference list, and any Appendices) with a 10% leeway (this means that no marks can be awarded for work beyond 2,200 words). HPS781 students please note that you have an additional 500 words for your reflection piece (see the last section of these instructions).
Formatting
Please ensure that you submit your work as a typed/word processed document, using a standard font (Times-New Roman) and suitable font size (12 pt) with double-line spacing. Your document should be formatted with 2.5 cm margins on each side. Please make sure that you spell-check AND carefully proofread your work prior to submission. For guidance with APA formatting, see this APA style guide (thank you Dr. Michael Do), and the example lab report referred to above.
Weighting
This assignment is worth 40% of the total grade for this unit.
Unit Learning Outcomes
The assignment assesses (ULO2), as students will need to autonomously conduct appropriate statistical analyses given specific research questions. As this assignment is a lab report, students will be required to defend conclusions drawn from obtained results (in the Discussion section) (ULO3). Finally, as a lab report, students will be expected to adhere to APA style guidelines (ULO4)
Background to the study
Mental health is a significant problem in Australia and manifests in psychological distress for individuals of differing ages and genders. With symptoms including depression and anxiety, and associations having been found with many negative outcomes, it is important to understand who might be at risk. Personality has been identified as a key risk/protective factor for mental health and psychological distress. One area of personality research where the research is mixed on this question is the emerging field of ‘light’ personalities. At its extreme, this fascinating personality constellation describes archetypal saints, but most individuals know someone who would be high on Kantianism, Humanism or Faith in humanity. These traits have been juxtaposed against darker personality traits which have been linked to mental health. And while there is limited evidence linking light traits to psychological distress (as protective factors), a direct test of this research question is warranted.
In this study, you will build on previous research, examine these questions and try to better understand light personalities.
Your lab report will need to use the provided literature to argue for the merits of this study, and lead to the following research question:
Does age, gender and each of the light personality traits (Faith, Humanism, Kantianism) predict psychological distress?
References (click to access them)
Please note that while you are free to examine other sources if you wish, you are not required to. We have also prepared a reading guide to help glean the important parts of these papers.
https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/covid-19
With that first link, you may have to paste the link into a browser. Please note that this report has a section focused on suicide. You do not need to read that section if it causes distress, rather, stick to the section on ‘Psychological distress’.
Aghababaei, N., Mohammadtabar, S., and Saffarinia, M. (2014).
Hengartner, M., Tyrer, P., Ajdacic-Gross, V., Angst, J., and Rossler, W. (2018)
Kaufman, S., Yaden, D., Hyde, E., and Tsukayama, E. (2019)
Paulhus, D., and Williams, K. (2002).
Lab Report Sections
You are required to submit a formal laboratory report for this assessment. The sections of the report are detailed below. As this is a research methods unit, the majority of the marks (70) are allocated to the results and discussion sections. Thus, your ability to report the results correctly and then interpret them appropriately is the main focus of the assessment.
Abstract (5 marks)
The abstract should be a summary of the rationale, methods, results, and conclusions of the report. This should be no longer than 150 words (no leeway here).
Things to include in this section…
A brief statement of the study background/aim(s) [the word limit is too brief to include hypotheses]
Important to mention the study design, which variables (not scale names) were measured (i.e., age, gender, Kantianism, humanism, faith in humanity and psychological distress), and also mention sample key demographics (e.g., how many people participated in the study).
you may not have words to state the hypotheses, but you can infer them when summarising key findings (e.g., ‘as hypothesised we found that…’)
Make reference to the method of statistical analysis (e.g., ‘Multiple regression analyses revealed that…’)
State any implications and a broad conclusion drawn from the findings which is related to either prior theory or your study aim(s).
Introduction (15 marks)
The introduction needs to provide a succinct and directed review of the relevant literature on the problem of mental health and psychological distress in Australia, and how age, gender and personality (see the light triad) are related to psychological distress. You should indicate why this topic is of interest to researchers, the individual, and society (hit the head, the heart and the wallet). You need to end with clear aims and specific hypotheses related to the research questions. The most important thing to remember is that the introduction is providing an argument for the hypotheses to follow. Thus, you will need to develop specific hypotheses which address the research question listed above (it can be 1 or more hypotheses pertaining to this research question). The hypotheses should flow smoothly and compellingly from the literature you have presented.
This section is only worth 15 marks, so be very concise and use the following questions to guide critical reading of references and write up of the Introduction section to your report:
Is psychological distress a problem in Australia?
Is psychological distress impactful differently across ages and genders?
Is personality related to the experience of psychological distress/mental health?
What does the research say about dark personalities, and therefore light personalities and the experience of psychological distress/mental health?
The key in your Introduction is to convince your reader that your research question needs to be investigated.
Method (5 marks)
In the method section you need to describe the participants, measures, and procedures which were utilised in the study. The important point to remember when writing a method section is that you need to provide enough information so that the experiment can be replicated by another researcher. We have provided the information pertaining to the measures and procedure for you to insert into your method section (view and download here: Method – T1 2022). However, you will need to report on the sample size, age (include age range, Mean age and SD), gender distribution (raw numbers and percentage) of the participants by analysing our data-file.
Your data will include some variables that are ready to be analysed in their current form, however you will need to create an overall measure of Psychological Distress. Pay close attention to any instructions the method section might give for calculating total scores from individual items and use the “Compute” function in jamovi to help you out. Hint: You can easily make summed scale values by using the SUM command.
Results (35 marks)
Along with the discussion, this is the major component of the report and you will be assessed on your ability to conduct and report the statistical procedures. Thus, here you need to present the results of the study – only present and describe them; there should be no interpretation of the data at this point.
There are really two parts to the results section.
In the first, you should present the descriptive statistics for all continuous variables in your multiple regression analysis (not gender as it is categorical and covered in your Method). Include key descriptives such as means, standard deviations, and min/max (lowest/highest) values. Briefly (1-2 sentences) explain what you see in terms of means, range and/or SD (without repeating the statistics from the table) for the interpretability of your inferential stats. See the example Lab Report for a good example of how to do this.
In the second part, you will present a multiple regression analysis (preceded by a correlation table). Make sure that these results are directly linked with your hypotheses (e.g., ‘Multiple regression analyses were conducted to test … It was found that …’). See your Seminars for how to write these analyses up. While you can do the relevant assumption tests for your own interest, such tests are not required for this assessment task (we have already examined them and determined there are no problems for the required analysis).
As the trimester progresses, you will become familiar with the specific analyses that you will be conducting to answer your research questions:
Does age, gender, Kantianism, Humanism and Faith in Humanity predict psychological distress?
Conduct a multiple regression to answer this question. You will need to consider the directions of some predictors (but not necessarily all). You will also need to decide between a standard multiple regression and a hierarchical multiple regression (the general argument put forward in your Introduction should justify this choice).
For each analysis you are required to report the results in the conventional manner (see your Seminar materials on CloudDeakin for illustrative examples of how to report the various statistical tests in APA format). You will need to compute the Psychological Distress variable by summing the DASS-21 Depression, Anxiety and Stress subscales (see Seminar 2 for summing such variables).
Discussion (35 marks)
The findings of the study should be discussed in relation to the aims and hypotheses presented in the introduction. You also need to discuss the findings with reference to prior research, in particular the literature that was cited in your introduction. There should be clear statements as to whether the hypotheses were supported.
It is generally a good idea to discuss one or two limitations. However, these limitations should be relevant to your specific research design rather than generic limitations (such as ‘correlation/regression does not imply causality’ or ‘the sample size was not large enough’). Even better is to be able to tie these limitations to future research directions.
Questions to help you write up your discussion section:
How do the present findings inform your research question(s)? (i.e., were the hypotheses supported? What do the results mean?)
How do findings advance current knowledge in this area?
What might explain any unexpected findings, or how might you further explore them?
Were there any factors that may limit the conclusions you draw from this data?
What findings were most important, and what is the big picture conclusion drawn from this study?
Scientific writing style etc. (5 marks)
This will also be assessed independently as well as within the demonstration of other criteria.
The word limit is 2,000 words (excluding your Abstract, Reference list, and any Appendices) with a 10% leeway. It is nonetheless important to be concise in your writing.
Required Files
Data set and Method document.
start a new blog to exercise the creative nonfiction techniques you are learning in this class.
Description
Overview
Your goal is to start a new blog to exercise the creative nonfiction techniques you are learning in this class. You
should also showcase your creativity and commitment to becoming a consistent writer. Each entry (except for
Post #2) should be original personal memoir, not rehash of the class assignments we may be doing from week to
week. Keep the work PG-13. Do not post anything that is not safe for work or school. Students must create a
new blog using BloggerLinks to an external site. and their UMES email address for this semester-long
assignment. Please take this seriously, the point of this exercise is to add purpose to your passion.
Assignment
For this assignment, you will create a blog. Your ongoing assignment is to post 300 words or more on that blog
at least once every week until the end of the semester. Don’t worry if you have never blogged before. Below, you
will find instructions for starting your Blogger siteLinks to an external site. using your UMES email. We will
also go through this in class. Do not use alternate email addresses or other websites to create this blog. You
should start a new blog for using the process below.
Sign into BloggerLinks to an external site. using your UMES Google email address.
Click “New Blog”
Create a name for your blog.
Click “Next”
Choose a blog address or URL.
Click “Save” (You will be asked to comply with Blogger’s user agreement.)
You can learn more about changing the design of your blog and personalizing things like color and layout by
clicking HERELinks to an external site..
Here are your weekly topics for the 11 weeks left in the semester:
Post #1: Introduce Yourself to the World (Complete by Sunday, March 6, 11:59 p.m.)
Use at least 300 words to explain who you are, your hobbies, and what you will discuss and focus upon during
the duration your blog. Show some personality here. Have a theme or through line that ties all your posts
together and spawns creativity. For example, a blog about the “Stupid Things My Roommate Says” or
“Cheerleading Chronicles” or “UMES Cafeteria Cuisine: Hot or Not?” or “Movie/Comic/Book/Music Mania.”
You can use drawings, photos, and video to enhance each post.
Post #2: The Final Draft of Your Micro Memoir (Complete by Sunday, March 6, 11:59 p.m.)
Post #3: Blog topic + Picture
Post #4: Blog topic + Video
Post #5: Blog topic + Link in-text to another relevant blog
Post #6: Blog topic + Six-word story about that topic
Post #7: Blog topic + Haiku about that topic
Post #8: Blog topic + Invitation for people to respond (end with a question to debate)
Post #9: Blog topic + A call to action (end with urging the reader to do something)
Post #10: Blog topic + references to something you’ve learned about the blog topic chosen
Post #11: Blog topic + farewell message
Note the due dates for the first two posts. You can complete the rest of the entries at your leisure. I recommend
doing one each week.
By the end of the semester, every student should have at least 11 posts on their blog as outlined above. Students
are welcome to add more as they see fit, but they must meet the minimum criteria listed for each post to receive
full credit for the project.
This is a semester long project, but as noted above, the first and second posts must be published by 11:59 on
March 6. Submit the blog URL here to prove those first two post have been completed.
https://www.blogger.com/u/4/blog/post/edit/3182775997568034902/4175816899683913950
What are three reasons why managers may not be providing honest assessments of the performance by their subordinates?
The Gentleman’s “Three”
By Brian J. Hall and Andrew Wasynczuk
As published in the Harvard Business Review
Between the inner and outer doors of Circale Corporation’s headquarters building, human resources VP Nils Ekdahl crossed paths with CFO Anita Fierst as he was leaving for lunch. “We need to make those cuts we talked about,” Fierst said briskly. She clearly wasn’t up for chit-chat about her recent trip to Asia. “I was looking at our org chart on the plane last night,” she continued. “After those two new acquisitions, the duplication across departments is untenable. We need to start achieving synergies right away.”
She paused while a group of employees passed, nodding hellos to both executives. Then she said, “I know Hal feels strongly about it.”
It always irked Ekdahl when she spoke for the CEO like that.
“He wants $20 million cut from the payroll in the next four months,” Fierst said.
“Working on it,” Ekdahl replied. “But as you know, it’s not just about the numbers. It’s also about making sure we have the right people in the right positions.”
“It is about the numbers,” she said. “I know in your department you like to take your time to get everything just right.” It was an unwarranted dig at both Ekdahl and his predecessor, Michael Milanese, who happened to be waiting for Ekdahl at their usual lunch spot in town. “But with all this duplication, you don’t have the luxury of identifying the perfect individual for every position.”
A few more employees passed by.
“Anyway,” she said. “More later.”
Within 10 minutes, Ekdahl was recounting the exchange over soup and salad.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Milanese said. His resentment toward Fierst was obviously abating six months after CEO Hal Taylor, at her urging, has pressured Milanese to retire. “It’s your show now, Nils. Stay the course. Fight the good fight. You know as well as I do that Circale’s future depends on it.”
Ekdahl was touched that his former boss still cared about the company, despite how he had been treated. Perhaps Milanese, long divorces and in sporadic contact with his grown children, didn’t have much left in his personal life. Or maybe it was that the retired executive had some unfinished business.
Fighting Grade Inflation
Michael Milanese had been the chief architect of a new performance-review system that Ekdahl was about to implement across all six of Circale’s global locations. It had been designed to ensure the objectivity of decisions about postmerger personnel cuts. The stated goal: Place the best person in every position.
Milanese had become obsessed with the importance of objective evaluations. He had convinced the CEO that it would be wrong to pare away employees from the acquired companies and retain just the veterans of the “old” Circale as the company expanded globally. That’s what had been done after previous acquisitions, with some disastrous results: A few years back the incompetent county head for Germany, a good-old Circale guy, had mishandled a scandal involving company officials who were accepting personal favors from vendors, and the recently appointed head for Brazil, a 20-year veteran, had so tyrannized his new employees that he had to be dismissed.
An analysis of those executives’ HR files showed, amazingly, that they had received powder-puff performance reviews for years – as had the entire workforce, for that matter. Grade inflation was so prevalent at Circale that decades’ worth of reviews were essentially useless for identifying miscreants, singling out high potentials, or any other purpose.
So the CEO had given the HR department the green light to create a new system that would force managers to be brutally honest. Milanese had begun visiting other companies, gathering information, and studying best practices in the area of performance review. Eventually he made Ekdahl coleader of the initiative. Together they struggled to develop a system by which each of Circale’s more than 3,000 nonsales employees would be explicitly compared with colleagues (salespeople continued to be evaluated on their sales numbers). When the project dragged on, Fierst was able to convince the CEO that Milanes was ineffective and should be “encouraged” to retire.
The CFO was right: Milanese was indeed a perfectionist. But that had helped Ekdahl. After being promoted to VP, he easily wrapped up the project, creating a fairly simple form for managers to fill out. On each of seven performance dimensions, ranging from “delivers results” to “builds internal goodwill,” managers were asked to rate employees on a five-point scale: “Significantly below others” was a 1, “somewhat below others” a 2, and so on up to “significantly above others,” a 5.
With the year-end-review season just a few weeks away, implementation was imminent.
Everyone is Above Average
Alone in his office, Ekdahl paged through the screens of performance-review results: 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5.
“Didn’t anyone get a 2?” he wondered aloud. Not only were there no 2s or 1s, but 3s were scarce. The average score, calculated automatically, was 4.6. He called Milanese.
“This is a disaster,” Ekdahl said. “We told every manager to look hard at each employee and be completely objective. Not one of them gave a bad score.”
“Are all the results in?” Milanese asked. “Is there a bug in the system?”
“No, Michael,” Ekdahl said with frustration. “But even the best-designed system can’t force people to be honest without an incentive. I’ve just generated an entire database of results I can’t use. I have to be straight about that with Hal – and Anita.” He looked at his watch. He was due to meet with Fierst in a few minutes.
“The employees haven’t seen the results, right?” Milanese asked.
“Of course not,” Ekdahl said.
“So you have to make managers do it again.” He sounded almost in a panic. “Hal wants to cut $20 million from the payroll, and he now understands that personnel decisions need to be made objectively. He’ll want the cuts to be data-driven.”
“I can’t order the managers to do another set of reviews right away,” Ekdahl said. “They’ve spent a lot of time on these. Besides, we don’t have any way to get better results. We need to figure out what went wrong.”
“Nils, be smart.” Milanese said. “Look at what happened to me. If you take time to analyze everything, you’ll seem like a procrastinator. You just need to get managers to feel comfortable issuing 1s and 2s. Help them see that awarding everyone a 4 or a 5 on all dimensions of performance is nonsensical. It’s not logically possible for all employees to be significantly above their peers. That’s fantasyland. You can correct this problem by holding training sessions, which should be easy to set up.”
Sure. Ekdahl imagined just how easy those sessions would be to arrange as he headed to Fierst’s office to share the numbers, which he had promised to do.
Evaluation Redux
Ekdahl gave Fierst a quick summary. She paused and said smugly, “Performance reviews have very limited usefulness. Managers don’t like to be honest. The best way to evaluate an employee is to look at his unit’s P&L. If there’s no relevant P&L, you’re pretty much flying blind.”
“I’m going to have the managers repeat the reviews,” Ekdahl said.
She looked shocked, almost personally offended. “When will they find the time for that?”
“They’ll make time,” Ekdahl said.
“Don’t they have real work to do?”
“This is their real work,” he said. “Performance reviews are critical. And they’re not just for doing layoffs and promotions the right way – you know that. We’ll-executed evaluations give a company the data it requires to develop talent. Employees need to know what they’re doing well and what they’re doing poorly so that they can improve. In my first review here, Michael gave me a 2. It was on flexibility – willingness to take advice and try new approaches. I treated it as a challenge. The next year, I got a 4. Effective reviews are essential to management.”
Fierst glared at him. She didn’t take well to being lectured. “All right, let’s say you force the managers to five employees lower marks. Will those numbers have any meaning? People will just manufacture low grades for employees they don’t like and fudge the rest. Nils, sometimes when you have to make cuts, you just have to make cuts. You design an algorithm and you go through the list. It’s painful but quick.”
“I won’t do that, Anita. I’m going to get useful results out of these performance reviews. And if the managers can’t deliver good data this time, I’ll make them do it again and again, until they get it right.”
He walked out of Fierst’s office and strode through the executive corridor until he came to an interior-facing window. It looked down on a set of conveyors staffed by workers wearing white from head to toe. Packages of meticulously constructed electronics components were gliding past them, heading out into the unforgiving world, where customers would be all too eager to make known any displeasure with Circale’s products. Only here in this sterile cocoon was practically every employee’s performance deemed to be perfect or dang near perfect. Ekdahl was so disgusted he could spit.
He would start organizing the training sessions immediately. And he would personally appear in a video in which he explained to managers that they must give every employee a 2 or a 1 on at least one performance dimension and that the average score across their direct reports must be a 3. After all, getting a 2 had worked for him.
Now everyone is Average
As soon as the managers’ completion deadline had passed, Ekdahl went over the data in his office. It was 6:30 pm on a Wednesday. Employees were streaming out of the buildings as he stared as the screens: 3, 3, 3, 2.
“Finally!” he said to himself. He scrolled through another form: 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3. “Good, Very good.” The more he looked, though, the clearer it became that there were an awful lot of 3s. An avalanche of them. His heart sank as he continued to click through pages.
As if on cue, Fierst poked her head in. “How are the new numbers?” she asked.
“Honestly,” Ekdahl said with resignation, “there are lots of 3s. Not much variation in the data, at least at a first glance.”
“I’m not surprised,” Fierst said. She wasn’t quite gloating, but Ekdahl could detect a hint of ‘I told you so’ in her voice. “Have you ever heard of grade compression? People give almost everyone the same grade, and distinctions become impossible to make. It happens when scores are inflated and cluster at the top, but it can also occur in the middle. All you did was move the average.”
Indeed, within a couple of days, the HR department’s analysis had revealed few deviations from 3 companywide. Moreover, managers seemed to have given high marks to people who were up for promotion anyway and low ratings to employees they didn’t know well. In one case, a manager gave someone all 1s. The employee, it turned out, had recently died.
Ekdahl wondered whether he really ought to follow through with his vow to make managers keep doing performance reviews until they got them right. Was it simply time to admit defeat and start recommending arbitrary cuts?
What are three reasons why managers may not be providing honest assessments of the performance by their subordinates?
Before we conduct performance assessments, we should determine the purpose of the endeavor. In this case, the organization was seeking to identify low performers and make cuts. How may this purpose have impacted the assessments from the managers?
Had the goal of the assessments been the opposite – to identify top performers for raises, promotions, etc., how might the supervisors’ ratings changed?
Putting yourself in Ekdahl’s position – what do you do? Do you make the managers complete another round of assessments and hope things improve? Do you schedule another round of training and then the assessments? Do you give up and follow Fierst’s advice? Or do you try another strategy, and if so, what would it be? Explain why you picked whichever option you did.
Identify the key takeaways and learnings you gathered from your full review of the presentations.
Description
Watch the following videos and view the respective presentations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATRDYRdi1Ks&t=276s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndDmUoSI_5Q
Identify the key takeaways and learnings you gathered from your full review of the presentations. For example:
What information was most beneficial and why?
How will the material presented help you in preparing for your program work?
What other questions may you still have that can be addressed?
Write a 350- to 700-word paper on education finance procedures and practices.
Write a 350- to 700-word paper on education finance procedures and practices.
Include the following in your paper:
The components of an annual budget
District and state requirements for financial accounting and auditing procedures and practices
The necessary roles to coordinate a school- and district-level budget
An outline of the steps needed to coordinate a school- and district-level budget
Please use the state of New Jersey
