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Case Assignment For this assignment, first carefully review the required background materials. Make sure you are highly familiar with the main steps involved in action research and organizational development discussed in the readings. When you are finished reviewing the background materials, take a close look at the four scenarios below. For each scenario below, think about the reasons why things did not work out well for the company in question. More specifically, think about which standard action research or organizational development step was not taken. Your task for this assignment is not to explain what steps the organization should take—you would need to go into the company and do some lengthy action research in order to do this! Instead just review the standard action research and organizational development steps covered in the background materials and try to assess which key step was missing in the scenarios below. Then write a 4- to 5-page paper addressing the following for each scenario: A. What action research or organizational step was missing and B. Why missing this step might have led to failure. Make sure to discuss at least one of the required readings in your discussion of each scenario, and to cite all three of the required readings in your paper. 1. Sales have gone down at the XYZ Widget Corporation and nobody in the organization, including the CEO, seems to know why. They decide to hire an organizational development consultant to do some action research. The consultant and the CEO spend a lot of time discussing how to proceed. It is agreed that the consultant will look at many different types of data, including sales data and interviews with most employees. After interviewing a few employees, the consultant decides that the problem faced by this company is almost the same as one of his previous clients who underpaid its sales staff. The consultant writes up a report recommending a large pay increase for the sales staff, which is immediately implemented. However, six months later sales are still down. 2. HN Motors is a large manufacturer of both cars and motorcycles. Given the new demand for high mileage vehicles, the company has decided to develop a car/motorcycle hybrid that has three wheels and looks like a tiny race car. However, neither the car department nor the motorcycle department wants to take the lead and the project keeps getting stalled. HN Motors decides to hire a consultant to mediate the differences between the car and motorcycle departments. During interviews with both departments, the consultant finds that the car department doesn’t want to work on the hybrid vehicle because of safety concerns. The consultant recommends that they “split the difference” between the two departments and that a cross-functional team be created with an equal number of employees from both departments working on the project. HN Motors’ management likes this recommendation and pay the consultant, but say that they can take it from here and don’t need the consultant’s services anymore. A few months later the project is still stalled and they don’t know why. They call up the consultant to try to get him to come back, but by now he is busy working with other clients. 3. Dr. Joseph Hotshot is a leading management consultant who charges huge fees for his Extra Special Action Research System®. His patented system involves conducting a survey, using a standard set of questions, of every employee of any company that hires him. Then he conducts a special seminar to motivate the employees, modifying his motivational speeches for each client slightly based on the answers to the survey. One day the CEO of Ace Carpet Cleaning runs across Dr. Hotshot’s website and sees that he has a special 50% discount on his consulting services this month. Not wanting to miss out on this bargain, the CEO decides to hire him. All of the employees become very motivated by Dr. Hotshot’s speech and work very hard for a few weeks. But after a few months nothing has really changed and the CEO starts to wonder if the large consulting fee was worth it even with the 50% discount. 4. The Kooltrendy Internet software company has recently purchased Hardwrk, a competing Internet software company. Kooltrendy wants the merger to go through as smoothly as possible with minimal conflicts between employees of the two companies, so they have hired an organizational development consultant to look at ways to help ease this transition for all employees. Kooltrendy interviews several consultants, but settles on one consultant who has a lot of experience with these types of mergers. The consultant conducts extensive one-on-one interviews with employees as well as a large-scale survey that assesses employee values and attitudes. After carefully reviewing the survey and interview data, the consultant concludes that Kooltrendy has a very fun and laid-back corporate culture, whereas Hardwrk has a more competitive and serious corporate culture. Satisfied that it knows how to fix the problem, Kooltrendy immediately decides to implement “Fun Fridays” for Hardwrk employees that involve water gun fights, costume contests, or other activities every Friday in order to bring Hardwrk’s culture more in line with the laid-back culture of Kooltrendy. However, they are puzzled to see that every Friday more and more Hardwrk employees quit and they are unsure why the “Fun Friday” solution did not work. Assignment Expectations Answer the assignment questions directly. Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials. Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make sure they are from credible sources. Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My Resources in the TLC portal.

Tips for writing the essay: **Address the prompt. Write a clear argument that responds to the issue. **Support your argument with concrete examples. **Be specific. Avoid sweeping generalizations. **Avoid clichés. **Write to express, not to impress. Communicate your ideas clearly. **Organize your essay logically. **Avoid unnecessary formatting (italics, borders, etc.). **When writing college essays, “don’t” is “do not”. In other words, do not use contractions. **If using sources, cite them appropriately. **Proofread carefully for grammatical and typographical errors.

Interviewing the Student About His Teacher The Sophia Times has asked you to interview Plato, the best known student of Socrates, about the life and death in 399 B.C.E. of one of the greatest Athenian philosophers. You need to prepare at least ten (10) questions to ask Plato during this interview. What you want to learn from Plato (since he has written about these things in his Dialogues) is information about Socrates that will help the readers of The Sophia Times learn more about this great teacher. Your readers want to understand what sort of things were important to Socrates, how he lived his life, what he was trying to teach the citizens of Athens, what sort of method he used to try to show people what they needed to know or learn, why he refused to quit teaching philosophy when doing so would save his life, why ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, how individual people could become their own philosophers, and so forth. So, you need well-developed and thoughtful questions for the interview which will prompt Plato into providing you with this information from the textbook. By the way, Socrates had a much better sense of humor than Plato did. • First, come up with at least ten (10) questions that you want to ask when you “interview” Plato. Plato’s “answers” to the interview questions should come from only the textbook, and no other sources should be used. • Next, write the “article” for The Sophia Times, which includes both the questions and the answers from the “interview.” • Make sure that Plato’s “answers” make it clear to your readers how important the life, teachings, and death of Socrates were both to his own students in Athens and to people studying philosophy today. Your “interview” should be “copy-ready” when it is submitted, which means that it follows standard American grammar rules, adheres to APA formatting and documentation, and is relatively free of misspelled words and other typographical errors. Since this will be a “feature story” for the newspaper, your editor said that it needs to be no less than 600 words and no more than 900 words.

will be submitting a 3 page memorandum about the value of literature for college students. You will identify in some detail two pieces of writing we have covered in addition to 2 pieces of writing that have been released in the last 3 years (either essay, short story, or novel) which has not been covered in this class. You will determine the impact exposure to these pieces can have on students in their studies and in their lives. You may incorporate current events as part of your discussion. Please use the file as the writing style

In 3-4 pages examine the work of the play “Merchant of Venice” : by William Shakespeare. In the historical views, talk about the time the piece of literature is taking place, what was happening at the time, and social conflicts within society. In the cultural views, mention the social values of when the piece of literature was written. Things that has happened in the piece and how it is reflective in a historical view. Please use the essay attached as a guide for the writing style.

Paper #3 Requirements: In an essay format, summarize the essay you chose by focusing on the following: What is the topic of the essay? What research or evidence does the author(s) provide supporting their research on the topic? In the same essay format, answer the critical thinking questions at the end of the essay. Discuss why this essay touches on the real world applications of psychology. You can discuss the author(s) applications but also provide your own (i.e., how it applies to society or how it applies to you).

Final Project: Business Plan Develop a business plan for a future business operation in any area that might be related to sports: Sports team, athletic facility (gym, stadium, arena, etc.), services (medical, recreational, etc), or other. In your plan, consider the following elements: • Marketing plan – o What is the size of market you will go after? How would you assess that? o what ways and means would you engage to explore and win the necessary market segments for your success. • Financial plan – where would the initial capital come from. Predict the cash flow in the first months of the operation. When your break-even point is expected to appear. How would you finance the business growth? How would you finance operational costs? • What legal challenges would have to be addressed? How would you make sure that your business is in accordance with the law? • Business operation o Develop an organizational structure o Discuss positions that would have to be filled. How many employees in those positions, planned compensation, required qualifications. o Facility. Rented, owned, constructed, or adapted. Location, its equipment. Cost of acquiring and cost of maintenance.

Political Science Which provisions in the Constitution give the federal government power to create, regulate, and mandate healthcare policies and according to whom? **Provide a news article or a congressional bill from the last four weeks to illustrate government actions in the policy area.

The Cause and Effect Analysis Essay topics must still follow the parameters of the Comparison and Contrast Essays. The topics must be related to current events, and you will choose something you know enough about to write 600+ words about without having to look up information. There is a list of approved topics from another class on the Announcements. You do not have to choose one of the topics on the Announcements. Take time to think this one through. In order to have an approved topic, you must submit your topic in Why question form with the 3 possible answers to that question listed underneath. DO NOT WRITE YOUR ESSAY WITHOUT AN APPROVED WHY QUESTION AND REASONS. The topics may not be “factual” topics. You are not writing a report. You are practicing getting your thoughts and ideas into writing in such a way that a reader might actually listen to what you have to say. Some things to remember about the Cause and Effect Analysis Essay You may not use 2nd person pronouns (you, you’re, your, you’ve) You may not use 1st person pronouns (I, we, us, our) 5 paragraphs. Introduction paragraph must begin with your approved Why question. The question must be a complete sentence and must end with a question mark. Introduction paragraph will be the only place you discuss “effects.” The effects help you justify why your topic is important to discuss. If there are no effects, then why are you even discussing this topic. Introduction paragraph should end with the thesis statement. The thesis statement includes the approved issue you’re analyzing and the 3 possible reasons. The 3 body paragraphs cover the 3 possible reasons why. ** You will not have a body paragraph on Causes and a body paragraph on Effects. The conclusion simply wraps things back up and restates the thesis in different words. Do NOT re-copy the thesis statement that you used in the intro. The Intro and Conclusion paragraphs should be the shortest paragraphs of the essay. Think about the hamburger analogy: The MEAT of the essay is in the body paragraphs. The Intro and Conclusion paragraphs are the buns.

• Select an organization, e.g., a corporation, company, firm or association (ideally, an organization which you have some interest in joining) for in-depth analysis of their customer services. • The research report should be approximately 10-15 pages (double spaced) with well documented references. • This research should incorporate wide array of data sources to cover all different aspects of sales and customer service management in detail and suggests meaningful recommendation to the company. • Data sources may include: internet, newspapers, trade magazines, library sources, industry analysis, analyst reports, focus group discussions, customer interviews, employee interviews, executive interviews, mystery shopping, ghost shopping, customer surveys, social media analysis, online community analysis, etc. • A 10-15 slide (not including title or reference slides) Power point presentation is a required component of the research project. Slides should not have more than 50 words of text and instead should have pictures, media, large fonts and should be visually appealing. You should include at least 100 words in the speaker notes for each slide with the exception of title and reference slides, which do not require speaker notes. Speaker notes are the words you would say to the audience for each respective slide. The PowerPoint requires at least 3 scholarly references, which should be in APA-format, i.e properly formatted in-text citations and a reference slide at the end of the presentation. • Project should be well organized and encompass the above subject and content guidelines, and an electronic copy of the project should be submitted via safe assignment The term paper report structure is as follows: (This structure is only to help students to get started and think further in this directions. Students are free to adapt the structure of the research report as they desire.) 1. Introduction 17 MGT 2268 – Sales and Customer Service Background and Context: Discuss type of industry, products/services, existing channels, competition in the context of sales and customer service, and how organizational vision and strategies have influenced their sales and customer service management. 2. Analysis of Personal Selling & Sales Management Approach 3. Analysis of Customer Service & Customer Turn offs 3.1 Analysis of Organizational Systems, Policies &Culture; 3.2 Analysis of Individual Actions 4. Analysis of the Use of Data and Technology for Sales & Customer Service 5. Recommendations 6. Conclusion 7. References