Develop both an external factor evaluation (EFE) matrix and an internal factor evaluation (IFE) matrix for a chosen organization, and write an analysis of the pros and cons and applications for use of each of these analytical tools.IntroductionAn EFE matrix summarizes the results of an external audit. Using an IFE matrix to identify and prioritize internal factors fosters communication across functions and allows functional employees to articulate their concerns about the organization’s business condition.

Assessment 2 instructions: efe and ife matrix | 4015 | Capella University – Minneapolis, MN

Cookie02

Develop both an external factor evaluation (EFE) matrix and an internal factor evaluation (IFE) matrix for a chosen organization, and write an analysis of the pros and cons and applications for use of each of these analytical tools.IntroductionAn EFE matrix summarizes the results of an external audit. Using an IFE matrix to identify and prioritize internal factors fosters communication across functions and allows functional employees to articulate their concerns about the organization’s business condition. An EFE matrix, an IFE matrix, and a SWOT analysis, which identifies the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats to an organization, are often completed together.Because of increased turbulence in business markets, an external audit is an important part of strategic management. An external audit includes collecting and evaluating information about competitors, technology, and legal, governmental, political, environmental, demographic, cultural, social, and economic trends in the marketplace. Organizations must empower their employees to identify, monitor, forecast, and evaluate external forces. Failure to do so might mean missed opportunities or ineffective strategies. It is important to use the Internet and information technology to gain information about the competition. Using an external factor evaluation (EFE) matrix and competitive profile matrix can help evaluate markets.Organizations also audit their internal strengths and weaknesses, including the major functional areas. The core operations of most organizations include management, marketing, finance, operations, research, and information systems. An internal audit helps ensure an organization’s health and may help establish competitive advantage and strengthen bottom-line performance. To do an internal assessment, strategists identify and evaluate internal strengths and weaknesses and formulate strategies for effectiveness. The process of doing an internal audit is an opportunity for employees throughout the organization to participate in choosing the future of the organization. Involvement in the process can energize and mobilize the enterprise.PreparationSelect an organization for which to create an external factor evaluation (EFE) matrix and an internal factor evaluation (IFE) matrix. Ideally, the company you choose will be a familiar one and one to which you have easy access, such as your place of employment or a company close to where you live. You may use the same organization for other assessments in this course.The following resources are required to complete the assessment.CAPELLA RESOURCESClick the links provided to view the following resources:

Using the EFE Matrix Template linked above, record the external factors, weights, ratings, and total weighted scores for your chosen organization. Once you complete the table in the template, discuss the pros and cons and applications for use of this analytical tool. You may record the written portion of the assessment in the template document, or you may create a separate document.
Using the IFE Matrix Template linked above, record the internal factors, weights, ratings, and total weighted scores for your chosen organization. Once you complete your IFE matrix table, discuss the pros and cons and applications for use of this analytical tool for the organization. In addition, propose strategies that address the following. You may record the written portion of the assessment in the template, or you may create a separate document.

What do you think would allow the organization to capitalize on its strengths?
What do you think would allow the organization to improve upon its weaknesses?
What are potential issues for stakeholders in their functional areas?

Additional Requirements

Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
APA formatting: If you use sources, ensure that resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting guidelines.
Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Competencies MeasuredBy successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
Competency 1: Evaluate key elements of the strategic planning process.

Develop an EFE matrix that includes factors, weights, ratings, and total weighted scores.
Develop an IFE matrix that includes factors, weights, ratings, and total weighted scores.

Competency 2: Analyze issues associated with stakeholders in the strategic planning process.

Interpret how the organization can capitalize on strengths.
Interpret how the organization can improve on weaknesses.
Illustrate potential issues for stakeholders in the functional areas.

Competency 3: Apply a sequential process for developing and implementing strategies, goals, objectives, and tactics as part of the strategic plan implementation.

Discuss the pros and cons and application of each of the analytical tools.

Review the evaluation methods for your plan. How will you communicate results to management on a regular basis? Consider a monthly report, management briefings, updates, and a yearly summary for board presentations. Describe how you plan to deal with the negative emotions (from employees or other audience groups) that often accompany bad news or other information.

This week, add the following sections to your final plan:

Review the evaluation methods for your plan. How will you communicate results to management on a regular basis? Consider a monthly report, management briefings, updates, and a yearly summary for board presentations.
Describe how you plan to deal with the negative emotions (from employees or other audience groups) that often accompany bad news or other information.

Finally, prepare the opening of the oral presentation that will describe your completed plan to management.
Presentation Notes
In your presentation notes, add 1 strategy for each of the following:

Reading the emotions of management: What to look for and how to respond
Dealing with any negative responses or emotions to the plan: Ways to resolve any possible conflict in the meeting
Finding approval for the plan: Continuing the meeting by moving past any negative emotions (resulting in a win-win for everyone involved)

Add your presentation notes to the end of the plan.
Provide 5–6 sources other than your textbook to support your answer. Use APA style for citations.

 CASE STUDY: Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault: Jessica  Sexual assault includes any type of sexual activity to which an individual does not agree. Because of the effects of some drugs, commonly called date rape drugs, victims may be physically helpless, unable to refuse, or even unable to remember what happened. Jessica, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, expresses concern to the school nurse practitioner that she knows someone who might have had sex “without knowing it.” How can the nurse practitioner answer these common questions?  Reflective Questions  1. What are date rape drugs and how can a person be unaware that such a drug has been ingested?  2. What can you do to protect yourself?  3. What do you do if you think you have been sexually assaulted?

Read the following case study and answer the reflective questions. Please provide evidence-based rationales for your answers. APA, 7th ed. must be followed, at least 500 words, 2 references, and must be within the last 5 years published. 
 CASE STUDY: Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault: Jessica 
Sexual assault includes any type of sexual activity to which an individual does not agree. Because of the effects of some drugs, commonly called date rape drugs, victims may be physically helpless, unable to refuse, or even unable to remember what happened. Jessica, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, expresses concern to the school nurse practitioner that she knows someone who might have had sex “without knowing it.” How can the nurse practitioner answer these common questions?
 Reflective Questions
 1. What are date rape drugs and how can a person be unaware that such a drug has been ingested?
 2. What can you do to protect yourself? 
3. What do you do if you think you have been sexually assaulted?
 4. What can you do when someone you care about has been sexually assaulted? 
5. What role does a nurse practitioner play in the care of sexually assaulted patients, particularly in the adolescent age group? 

Link for video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-QiSvuLLM After you watch these videos, address the following questions and prompts in your journal assignment based on your experience with organizational culture and change. Consider what you watched in the videos as well as what you have learned in the course up to this point. How does organizational culture impact the change process? Reflect on your experience dealing with change. Explain whether you are naturally open to change or whether you resist change. Based on your experience with change, explain how management helped or hindered the change process.

DUE IN !N 12 HOURS!!
Important components of the organizing facet of the P-O-L-C framework are organizational structure and culture. Change is inevitable in any company, and managers who understand how to manage change within their organizational structure and culture will be more successful with implementing and sustaining change. First, watch the following TED Talk videos:
Embracing Change Video (18:03) This TED Talk, presented by Jason Clarke, examines the choices, and opportunities, presented to us through change. 
Link for Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhM8lxibSU
Lead and Be the Change Video (5:20)This TED Talk by Mark Mueller-Eberstein describes the emotional states that people and organizations experience when confronted with change and transformation. 
Link for video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv-QiSvuLLM
After you watch these videos, address the following questions and prompts in your journal assignment based on your experience with organizational culture and change. Consider what you watched in the videos as well as what you have learned in the course up to this point.

How does organizational culture impact the change process?
Reflect on your experience dealing with change. Explain whether you are naturally open to change or whether you resist change.
Based on your experience with change, explain how management helped or hindered the change process.

LINK FOR THE RUBRIC:
https://learn.snhu.edu/content/enforced/1268078-OL-215-H4214-OL-TRAD-UG.23EW4/Course%20Documents/OL%20215%20Journal%20Rubric.pdf
APA format for citations

When conflicting medical opinions are presented, should the advice of a medical expert count more heavily than the opinion of a general physician? Explain your answer. Is the charge of discrimination presented by Donald’s lawyer relevant to this case? Explain your answer. If you were presented with this case, what decision would you reach? Explain.

Question 140 PointsCase Study 1. Adobe’s Family-Friendly Benefits: An Unexpected Backlash
Adobe Consulting Services (ACS), a provider of HR software application systems, prides itself on the variety of benefits it offers employees. In addition to health care, pension, and vacation benefits, the company offers an attractive family-friendly benefits package including flexible schedules, child and elder care assistance, counseling services, adoption assistance, and extended parental leave. Unfortunately, sometimes the company’s progressive work–life policy experiences a backlash from some employees, as the following case illustrates.
In March 2019, Teresa Wheatly was hired by Adobe as a software accounts manager. With excellent administrative and technical skills, plus 4 years of experience at Adaptable Software, Adobe’s main competitor, Teresa became a valued addition to the company’s marketing team. As a single mother with two grade-school children, Teresa received permission to take Fridays off. She was also allowed to leave work early or come in late to meet the needs of her children. Teresa is one of 11 software account managers at Adobe.
The problem for Adobe, and particularly for Janis Blancero, director of marketing, began in the fall of 2019. On September 15, Dorothy McShee, citing “personal reasons”—which she refused to discuss—requested a 4-day workweek for which she was willing to take a 20 percent cut in pay. When Dorothy asked for the reduced work schedule, she sarcastically quipped, “I hope I don’t have to have kids to get this time off.” On October 3, Juan Batista, a world-class marathon runner, requested a flexible work hours arrangement to accommodate his morning and afternoon training schedule. Juan was registered to run the London, England, marathon in May 2021. Just prior to Juan’s request, Susan Woolf asked for and was granted an extended maternity leave to begin after the birth of her first child in December.
If these unexpected requests are not enough, Blancero has heard comments from senior account managers about how some employees seem to get “special privileges,” while the managers work long hours that often require them to meet around-the-clock customer demands. She has adequate reason to believe that there is hidden tension over the company’s flexible work hours program. Currently, Adobe has no formal policy on flexible schedules. Furthermore, with the company’s growth in business combined with the increasing workload of software account managers and the constant service demands of some customers, Blancero realized that she simply cannot grant all the time-off requests of her employees.
Questions
1. Do managers like Janis Blancero face a more complicated decision when evaluating the personal requests of employees versus evaluating employees’ individual work performance? Explain.
2. a. Should Adobe establish a policy for granting flexible work schedules? Explain. 
 b. If you answered yes, what might that policy contain?
3. If you were Janis Blancero, how would you resolve this dilemma? Explain.

Question 210 PointsCase Study 2. Too Much Fatigue and Stress? You Decide
Job fatigue and stress are significant problems faced by employees and their managers. Unfortunately, when a case of depression arises as a result, trying to resolve the problem may be difficult—sometimes leading to conflict—as this case illustrates.
Donald Knolls was an air traffic control supervisor for International Gateway Airport (IGA), an airport serving a major metropolitan area. Donald began to experience depression-related problems largely due to severe stress and fatigue on the job. A few months later, he requested and was granted a disability leave for treatment of his illness. After eight months, his personal physician, an expert in depression treatment and a licensed consulting psychologist agreed that he was sufficiently improved to return to his former position.
IGA then sent Donald to the physician it had used when Donald first requested his disability leave. After an extensive evaluation, the doctor concluded that while Donald had made considerable strides in overcoming his depression, he should not be immediately returned to his former supervisory position because the conditions of the job had not changed and he was apt to find the stress too great. Instead, he recommended that Donald be returned to a nonsupervisory position on a six-month trial basis, with the case to be reviewed at the end of that time. IGA followed the advice of its doctor and did not return Donald to a supervisory position. Donald, angered by management’s decision, filed a grievance through IGA’s alternative dispute resolution procedure, a procedure that could end in binding arbitration.
During several meetings between Donald and management, the employer maintained that it had the right to rely on the medical opinion of “a fair and impartial” doctor who had determined that Donald should not be returned to the position that was the cause of his original stress-related emotional problems. Additionally, management pointed out to Donald that IGA’s disability leave provision stated that it “may require appropriate medical documentation if it believes an employee is not fit to return to his or her former position.”
Donald responded, through an attorney he hired to represent his position, that the disability leave provisions were clear but, nevertheless, biased against an employee because they completely disregarded the opinion of his physician and psychologist. According to Donald, “Why bother to get expert medical opinions if they are dismissed?” He further noted, “I have never felt better. I’m really ready to get back to my job.” Finally, Donald’s lawyer contended that Donald was the victim of discrimination based on his former state of depression: “What happened to Donald would not have happened if his illness had been a more conventional physical injury.”
Questions

When conflicting medical opinions are presented, should the advice of a medical expert count more heavily than the opinion of a general physician? Explain your answer.
Is the charge of discrimination presented by Donald’s lawyer relevant to this case? Explain your answer.
If you were presented with this case, what decision would you reach? Explain.

Please select ONE of the following topics to discuss in your journal entry. Make sure to connect this learning to your own interpersonal communication/relational experiences.  I am a full time student, full time parent, and work full time 1. How can Mindful Listening impact daily lives, positively? CH6. 2. What is Mindfulness; and how does it impact communication and relationships? 3. How do Emotion influence conversations or relationships and their outcomes? CH:7 4. How can Self-Concept become constructive or destructive in our lives?

 
Please select ONE of the following topics to discuss in your journal entry. Make sure to connect this learning to your own interpersonal communication/relational experiences. 
I am a full time student, full time parent, and work full time
1. How can Mindful Listening impact daily lives, positively? CH6.
2. What is Mindfulness; and how does it impact communication and relationships?
3. How do Emotion influence conversations or relationships and their outcomes? CH:7
4. How can Self-Concept become constructive or destructive in our lives?
5. How can Emotional Intelligence be applied to daily life?
6. How do Communication Climates directly impact relationships either personally or professionally? CH:8
7. What occurs in a relationship when Self-Disclosure and Trust cannot be shared?

Discuss, in 2-3 pages, FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA, including penalties and cases against companies for violating the acts.IntroductionIt is very important for HR professionals, and all members of management, to be familiar with the laws and acts that govern leaves of absences, benefits, medical information and retirement and health plans. The major ones to understand include: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) applies to all employers having 50 or more employees and entitles all eligible employees to receive unpaid leave up to 12 weeks per year for specified family or medical reasons. Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA): In 1985, the Congress enacted Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) to provide current and former employees and their spouses and dependents with a temporary extension of group health insurance when coverage is lost due to qualifying events (for example, layoffs). All employers with 20 or more employees must comply with COBRA.

Assessment 5 instructions: fmla, cobra, hipaa, and erisa | 4043 | Capella University – Minneapolis, MN

Cookie02

Discuss, in 2-3 pages, FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA, including penalties and cases against companies for violating the acts.IntroductionIt is very important for HR professionals, and all members of management, to be familiar with the laws and acts that govern leaves of absences, benefits, medical information and retirement and health plans. The major ones to understand include:

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) applies to all employers having 50 or more employees and entitles all eligible employees to receive unpaid leave up to 12 weeks per year for specified family or medical reasons.
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA): In 1985, the Congress enacted Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) to provide current and former employees and their spouses and dependents with a temporary extension of group health insurance when coverage is lost due to qualifying events (for example, layoffs). All employers with 20 or more employees must comply with COBRA.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA): The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was designed to (1) lessen an employer’s ability to deny coverage for a preexisting condition and (2) prohibit discrimination on the basis of health-related status.
Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA): The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) is a federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established retirement and health plans in private industry to provide protection for individuals in these plans.
Four acts—FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA—passed by the Congress greatly define the arena of benefits.InstructionsFor this assessment, in 2–3 pages:
Define each act—FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA—briefly.
Cite one current issue that employers are, or should be, concerned with for each act.
Describe the violations and penalties that employers can face for violating these acts.
Describe, for each law, an example of an actual legal case involving an organization that has violated this law.
You may reference your text, your current work environment, an interview with a colleague, a head of HR, an article from a popular business publication, or related information from the Capella University Library.To find articles talking about these laws and the impacts on business, see the Searching Business Research Articles tab on this guide:
Business Research Library Guide.
Suggested resources to begin with include:
Business Source Complete.
ABI/INFORM Global.
See also the Legal Research library guide for help with locating legal cases.Additional RequirementsYour assessment should also meet the following requirements:
Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
Formatting: One-inch margins, appropriate headers, and a title page.
Length: 2–3 double-spaced pages.
Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
Competencies MeasuredBy successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
Competency 2: Analyze base pay programs and the major laws and acts that govern employee pay.

Explain briefly and accurately the federal acts of FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA.

Competency 3: Analyze base benefit plans and the primary laws and acts that govern employee benefits.

Describe, for each of the federal acts of FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA, one current issue with which employers are, or should be, concerned.
Describe what, if any, penalties a company may incur for violating or for unsuccessfully challenging each of FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA.
Describe, for each of the federal acts of FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA, an organization that has violated the act, the violation, and the penalties that were imposed.

Competency 5: Apply the Capella Writing Standards to support professional practice

Convey purpose, in an appropriate tone and style, incorporating supporting evidence and adhering to organizational, professional, and scholarly writing standards.

As you read in your text, chronic stress can have serious impacts on your physical and mental well-being. Discuss some of the major stressors in your life and what steps have you taken in order to reduce your stress level. How can you improve your well-being or prevent stress-related illness?  If you do not feel comfortable sharing personal stressors, discuss some common stressors from your readings.

As you read in your text, chronic stress can have serious impacts on your physical and mental well-being. Discuss some of the major stressors in your life and what steps have you taken in order to reduce your stress level. How can you improve your well-being or prevent stress-related illness?  If you do not feel comfortable sharing personal stressors, discuss some common stressors from your readings.

Write a 4-6 page executive report that analyzes ethical dilemmas presented in a case study, identifies the ethical principles that guide decision making and describes the external and internal factors that must be considered in ethical dilemmas. Explain evidence-based strategies to resolve ethical dilemmas and how personal moral integrity influences decision-making.

 
Write a 4-6 page executive report that analyzes ethical dilemmas presented in a case study, identifies the ethical principles that guide decision making and describes the external and internal factors that must be considered in ethical dilemmas. Explain evidence-based strategies to resolve ethical dilemmas and how personal moral integrity influences decision-making.
Introduction
The health care system in the United States is in the process of being transformed from a patriarchal health care system to the currently emerging patient-centered care model. The patient cultural revolution, boosted by technological advances and increased access to health-related information, presents tremendous change and managerial challenges throughout the entire health care system. These changes affect direct patient care facilities as well as the organizations and administrative departments related to, and supporting, their efforts. The patient-centered care model has increased the need for a solid leadership understanding of the patient experience and an enhanced ability to measure, interpret, and report it accurately. Ethical challenges related to patient-centered care present additional considerations to the existing managerial task of balancing quality care and fiscal responsibility.
Preparation
Suppose you are the new health care administrator at Brookside Hospital. Brookside Hospital is in the process of strategically aligning with patient-centered care principles, which are founded on ethics and represent a major transformation away from the patriarchal health care system of the past. End-of-life care and death with dignity are two important aspects of patient-centered care.
Read the patient-centered care Case Study Scenario [PDF]. Within the case study provided are three distinct ethical dilemmas:

An internal or organizational dilemma.
A formal process dilemma.
A discharge and end-of-life planning dilemma.

You must now prepare an executive report for the hospital’s board of directors to explain the situation and how you handled it.
Review the resources provided to see how they may help you in completing this assessment. Conduct your own search in the Capella library and on the Internet to locate authoritative resources on patient-centered care. You will need at least four resources to support your work in this assessment.
Format this assessment as an executive report. It should be well organized and logical, include a title page and references page, and follow APA guidelines for citations and references.
Instructions
In your executive report and for each of the ethical dilemmas, be sure you include the following:

Analyze the ethical dilemmas presented in the case study.

Describe each of the ethical dilemmas.
Explain the factors that contributed to each dilemma.

Identify the ethical principle that you used for each ethical dilemma to help guide your decision making.
Describe the external forces and internal organizational factors you considered for each dilemma.

Describe any legal or regulatory forces.
Describe any organizational policies and/or processes.

Explain the evidence-based strategy you used to resolve each ethical dilemma. (Hint: another way to think of this is to imagine that you did take action on each of the dilemmas. With that in mind, what strategy would you use and what supporting evidence do you have that the strategy is sound and effective?)
Explain how an awareness of your own personal integrity helped you decide on a strategy.

Additional Requirements

Include a title page and references page.
Number of pages: 4–6, double-spaced.
At least four current scholarly or professional resources.
APA format for citations and references.
Times New Roman font, 12-point.

Note: The assessments in this course build upon each other, so you are strongly encouraged to complete them in sequence.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

Competency 1: Explain how ethical theories and principles influence health care organizational management practice.

Identify the ethical principles that guide decision making in health care management.
Analyze the ethical dilemmas in health care management.
Explain evidence-based strategies to resolve ethical dilemmas in health care.

Competency 2: Describe how external forces and internal organizational factors influence ethical health care management practices.

Describe the external and internal factors that guide health care management practices.

Competency 3: Examine the role personal moral integrity plays in ethical leadership practice.

Explain how personal moral integrity guides ethical decision making in health care management.

Competency 4: Communicate ideas effectively.

Correctly format citations and references using current APA style.
Write content clearly and logically, with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics.

Identify an organization to study. I recommend using your network when approaching a company. Using a company, you are currently working or recently worked for is a great idea. If this is the case, you can use yourselves as one of the interviewees. You will need to conduct a total of three interviews with current or former employees of this organization. Interviewing someone from HR is desirable, but not required. The interviewees need to be knowledgeable about the topic you study. Note that having all interviewees from the HR department is not necessarily a good strategy, as their view of performance management and reward systems is often more positive relative to that in other departments. 

Organization:  Nike
1. Identify an organization to study. I recommend using your network when approaching a company. Using a company, you are currently working or recently worked for is a great idea. If this is the case, you can use yourselves as one of the interviewees. You will need to conduct a total of three interviews with current or former employees of this organization. Interviewing someone from HR is desirable, but not required. The interviewees need to be knowledgeable about the topic you study. Note that having all interviewees from the HR department is not necessarily a good strategy, as their view of performance management and reward systems is often more positive relative to that in other departments. 
2. Choose a topic. Topics are listed below. Your chosen topic should fit the organization you are studying. For example, if you are studying incentives, you should study an organization that actually uses incentives. If your topic is performance reviews, the company in question must have a structured performance review system in place.
List of Topics: Benefits 
· Incentives (Describe the financial incentive systems in place in the company, provide a critique of strengths and limitations, along with your recommendations). Note that incentives have a specific definition in this course. Incentives are programs that tie pay to individual, group, and/or organizational performance. This is different from benefits, and different from the dictionary definition of incentives. 
· Benefits (Describe the discretionary benefits in place in the company as it is experienced by employees, provide a critique of strengths and limitations, along with your recommendations.) Note that in this course we are interested in benefits that are considered to be a person’s overall pay (e.g., 401k plans, health insurance, child care, tuition benefits etc) and not on the general benefits of working in a company (such as advancement opportunities). Your paper should focus on benefits as defined in this course. 
3. Master your topic. In the final report, your job is to first describe what the company is doing, then analyze its strengths and limitations, and offer recommendations. In other words, your entire report will consist of a description of the company’s activities (obtained from your three interviews and any other publicly available information about the company) and your recommendations. Before you go to the interviews, you need to master your topic so that you can create smart and meaningful questions. Start by reading the relevant sections from the book. I would also encourage you to read additional articles on the topic from outlets such as Harvard Business Review, SHRM website, Workforce, People Management etc.
4. Develop a list of questions. Your questions should attempt to uncover what the company is doing, as well as strengths and weaknesses of your chosen company in your topic of study. The purpose of these questions is to see whether the company is doing the things identified in your literature review, as well as what this company is doing right, and what can be improved. Avoid asking for sensitive or confidential information.
5. Research the company through interviews and other sources. You need to interview three current or former employees of your chosen company (one of them may be a team member). In addition, you may gather relevant information through the company’s website, news articles, and any other sources.
Make sure that the responses of your interviewees are strictly held confidential. Do not attempt to gather information through surveys or via e-mail. Surveys do not give you the opportunity to expand on the answers and tend to contain brief responses, which leads to a superficial analysis of the organization of interest. Instead, I would like you to talk to the people in question and ask further questions to clarify answers. Zoom meetings are perfect for this. 
6. Write up the paper. Most papers are around 12-15 pages, excluding the references and appendix. Use size 12 times new roman, with 1 inch of margins on all sides. (Double spaced). Please do not exceed 15 pages of text. 
Paper Format
Your paper should roughly have the following outline:
Title page: Include the title of your paper, and names and e-mail addresses of all your team members.
 
Introduction: Provide an overview of your paper. This section should summarize the outline you will follow in the paper. (about half a page)
 
Company Information: Provide an overview of the company, and describe how you collected the information. Here, you should introduce the people you interviewed (their job titles, demographic characteristics: age, gender, position, tenure) while at the same time protecting their identity. (less than 1 page)
 
Findings: Describe what you learned as a result of the interviews and through other methods. If your topic is incentives at Nike, this section would discuss:
o What types of financial incentives does Nike have that link employee, team, or organizational performance to rewards?
o How do these rewards work? What are their strengths and limitations in motivating workers? What are the problems in their implementation?
Be sure to structure your findings in a meaningful way, using headings and subheadings. Please do not summarize your findings by interviewee. Remember that the project is not meant to read like a transcript of your interviews. Your goal is to provide a description of the system in place, along with its upsides and downsides, rather than summarizing what each person said during the interviews. 
What matters in this section is to provide a complete coverage of what the company is doing, whether it is working, its strengths, and weaknesses. Everything you discuss in this section should relate to the company you are analyzing. Also, remember that perceptions define reality. Just because you think Nike does a good job with incentive management is not enough. What do the employees think? Do not assume that just because a company is successful, they must have an excellent system in place. Even successful companies have incentives, benefits, and performance review systems that fall much short of best practices, and there is always room for improvement. 
Recommendations: Provide your recommendations based on your findings. What are they doing right and should they keep doing it? What are the problems you have observed or areas for improvement? Your recommendations should: 
· Be logical and reflect an understanding of the best practices.
· Be feasible given the company.
· Be based on problems in the company you have observed and identified in the findings section. 
· Be related to your chosen topic. In other words, if your topic is reward systems, your recommendations should target the reward system. Do not suggest changes in the job design in a paper dealing with reward systems. 
Conclusion: It should be about a paragraph long. 
Reference List: Provide a list of all the sources you used, if any. Note that you are not required to cite external sources, but if you do, please cite them and include full information in the references list. 
Grading Criteria for the Project
· Timeliness of the project. If the project is submitted up to 24 hours late, it will be graded out of a B. If submitted 24-48 hours late, it will be graded out of a C. Beyond 48 hours, late submissions will not be accepted. 
· Appearance: 
o Does the paper look clean and professional?
o Is the paper mostly free from typos and grammar mistakes?
I will take out up to 10 points for problems in these areas: