Indicate what information should be collected to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your recommendations.

Assignment Content

  1. Resources: Pastas R Us, Inc. Database & Microsoft Excel®, Wk 1: Descriptive Statistics Analysis Assignment

    Purpose
    This assignment is intended to help you learn how to apply statistical methods when analyzing operational data, evaluating the performance of current marketing strategies, and recommending actionable business decisions. This is an opportunity to build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills within the context of data analysis and interpretation. You’ll gain a first-hand understanding of how data analytics supports decision-making and adds value to an organization.

    Scenario:
    Pastas R Us, Inc. is a fast-casual restaurant chain specializing in noodle-based dishes, soups, and salads. Since its inception, the business development team has favored opening new restaurants in areas (within a 3-mile radius) that satisfy the following demographic conditions:

    • Median age between 25 – 45 years old
    • Household median income above national average
    • At least 15% college educated adult population
    • Last year, the marketing department rolled out a Loyalty Card strategy to increase sales. Under this program, customers present their Loyalty Card when paying for their orders and receive some free food after making 10 purchases.

      The company has collected data from its 74 restaurants to track important variables such as average sales per customer, year-on-year sales growth, sales per sq. ft., Loyalty Card usage as a percentage of sales, and others. A key metric of financial performance in the restaurant industry is annual sales per sq. ft. For example, if a 1200 sq. ft. restaurant recorded $2 million in sales last year, then it sold $1,667 per sq. ft.

      Executive management wants to know whether the current expansion criteria can be improved. They want to evaluate the effectiveness of the Loyalty Card marketing strategy and identify feasible, actionable opportunities for improvement. As a member of the analytics department, you’ve been assigned the responsibility of conducting a thorough statistical analysis of the company’s available database to answer executive management’s questions.

      Report:
      Write a 750-word statistical report that includes the following sections:

    • Section 1: Scope and descriptive statistics
    • Section 2: Analysis
    • Section 3: Recommendations and Implementation
    • Section 1 – Scope and descriptive statistics
    • State the report’s objective.
    • Discuss the nature of the current database. What variables were analyzed?
    • Summarize your descriptive statistics findings from Excel. Use a table and insert appropriate graphs.
    • Section 2 – Analysis
    • Using Excel, create scatter plots and display the regression equations for the following pairs of variables:
    • “BachDeg%” versus “Sales/SqFt”
    • “MedIncome” versus “Sales/SqFt”
    • “MedAge” versus “Sales/SqFt”
    • “LoyaltyCard(%)” versus “SalesGrowth(%)”
    • In your report, include the scatter plots. For each scatter plot, designate the type of relationship observed (increasing/positive, decreasing/negative, or no relationship) and determine what you can conclude from these relationships.
    • Section 3: Recommendations and implementation
    • Based on your findings above, assess which expansion criteria seem to be more effective.Could any expansion criterion be changed or eliminated? If so, which one and why?
    • Based on your findings above, does it appear as if the Loyalty Card is positively correlated with sales growth? Would you recommend changing this marketing strategy?
    • Based on your previous findings, recommend marketing positioning that targets a specific demographic. (Hint: Are younger people patronizing the restaurants more than older people?)
    • Indicate what information should be collected to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your recommendations. How can this data be collected? (Hint: Would you use survey/samples or census?)
    • Cite references to support your assignment.

      Format your citations according to APA guidelines.

      Submit your assignment.

Explain the basic models of quality improvement in healthcare.

Competency

Explain the basic models of quality improvement in healthcare.

Course Scenario

Chaparral Regional Hospital is a small, urban hospital of approximately 60 beds, and offers the following:

  • Emergency room services
  • Intensive care
  • Surgical care
  • Obstetrics
  • Diagnostic services
  • Some rehabilitation therapies
  • Inpatient pharmacy services
  • Geriatric services
  • Consumer physician referral services

Recently, the CEO has been hearing complaints from both patients and staff, varying from long wait times to rude physicians. You have been hired to design and implement a Quality Improvement Plan to help uncover quality problems and to satisfactorily resolve them.

Scenario Continued

The CEO has met with you to let you know that some members of the Board of Directors are questioning the value of developing a quality improvement plan. She has asked you to create an executive summary and an information sheet to be included in the next Board packet.

instructions

Topics for the executive summary should include:

  1. What is a Quality Improvement plan?
  2. Why do healthcare facilities create improvement plans?
  3. Why would you recommend the facility create and implement a QI plan?

NOTE – APA formatting for the reference list, and proper grammar, punctuation, and form required.

After completing the Executive Summary, you will create a one-page information sheet for the Board that they can use to answer questions about QI plans.

  1. The information sheet should give your CEO and the Board of Directors enough information to have an educated conversation with patients and other stakeholders on the value of QI plans.
  2. Make sure to use audience-specific language and tone on your information sheet. Remember, you are writing this information sheet for your CEO and the Board of Directors.
  3. Be creative, and make your information sheet fun and organized.

Executes an appropriate information sheet for board review containing detailed information on QI plans with examples.

Correctly identifies the purpose of a QI plan and thoroughly discusses supporting details.

Selects theory with fully supporting personal examples and explanation.

Correctly identifies reasons healthcare facilities create improvement plans and thoroughly discusses supporting details.

Provides a recommendation for developing a QI plan and thoroughly discusses supporting details.

Describe  why you chose this particular article and what is compelling about it.  Do you agree or disagree And why

Each student will select one of the key terms listed  below and conduct a search of our University’s online Library  resources to find 1 recent peer-reviewed article (ATTACHED TO THIS POST) that closely relate to the concept. Your submission must include the following information in the following format:

Key Terms:

Emotional Intelligence

DEFINITION: a brief definition of the key term followed by the APA reference for the term; this
does not count in the word requirement.

SUMMARY: Summarize the article in your own words- this should be in the 150-200-word
range. Be sure to note the article’s author, note their credentials, and why we should put any
weight behind his/her opinions, research, or findings regarding the key term. Name the title of
the article and the author(s).

ANALYSIS: Using 300-350 words, write a brief analysis, in your own words of how the article
relates to the selected Key Term. Provide your personal critique of the article and the author(s).
A Journal Article Review analysis is not rehashing
what was already stated in the article, but the opportunity for you to add value by sharing your
experiences, thoughts, and opinions. This is the most important part of the assignment.

REFERENCES: All references must be listed at the bottom of the submission–in APA format.

Be sure to use the headers in your submission to ensure that all aspects of the assignment are completed as required.

Any form of plagiarism, including cutting and pasting, will result in zero points for the entire assignment.

 

To assist you here is how I look at each paper:

Keep  the discussion in your analysis section to address the types of  questions listed in the tips paper. It’s your personal evaluation of the  journal article I’m looking for — not a mini research paper on the  contents or meaning of the article.

Describe  why you chose this particular article and what is compelling about it.  Do you agree or disagree And why. Did the author do a good job? What  could the author have done better? What recommendations would you make  for the author? Who would benefit most from reading the article? Was the  article easy to understand?

You  analysis section should be 100% on discussing these type topics. You  can use your own creativity as long as it covers your evaluation and  critique of the article …not the content of the article.

  • attachment

    emotionalintelligence.pdf

Determine the value of each of the five designs explored over the last two weeks

Determine the value of each of the five designs explored over the last two weeks

Create an instructor’s presentation to teach students about qualitative research designs. This week, you were presented with three different qualitative research designs. Determine the value of each of the five designs explored over the last two weeks, and then critique the utility of each one relative to your research problem. Create a narrated PowerPoint presentation that includes the following:

  • Cover and references slides (these do not contribute to sliding count)
  • The problem to be investigated (your problem statement from Week 1)
  • A critique of five qualitative research designs
  • Comparison and contrast of the value of these designs
  • Defense of your selection of one of the designs covered this week for your proposed dissertation research study.
  • Note: This presentation should be usable in a teaching environment

Length: 8 slide PowerPoint narrated presentation. Speaker notes (minimum 200 words per slide)

Your presentation should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts presented in the course and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your response should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards.

Book Review

Book Review Instructions

Read the following: Grudem, W. (2003). Business for the glory of God: The Bible’s teaching on the moral goodness of business. Wheaton: IL: Crossway. ISBN: 9781581345179.

Begin reading during the first module/week of the course. In Module/Week 5, you will submit a book review of 1,000 words in current APA format. Choose 1 chapter and write an in-depth review of the chapter you choose. Discuss 1 or 2 main points with which you agree and 1 or 2 with which you do not agree, supporting your thoughts with well-reasoned arguments. Your analysis must also be supported by at least 3 sources other than the Grudem book, and by biblical principles. Each additional source must be cited in-text and in a reference list in current APA format. This review will be evaluated based on the grading rubric provided.

Submit the Book Review by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Monday of Module/Week 5.

Optimizing Team Performance at Google

Optimizing Team Performance at Google

Effective teams can make the difference between a business’s success and failure. This exercise is important because in order for managers to build effective teams, they must recognize the strengths and weaknesses of potential team members and develop their teams accordingly.

The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate the positive impact of effective team building.

Read the case about the role of Project Aristotle at Google; then, using the 3-step problem-solving approach, answer the questions that follow.

Google is well on its way to ruling the universe. Whether this is its actual goal or not, the company’s short- and long-term success depend on the performance of its work teams. Realizing this, Google applied its immense human, technological, and financial resources to finding out what makes top-performing teams so effective. Despite its legendary achievements, the company knew that teams vary considerably in terms of their performance, member satisfaction, and level of cohesion and conflict. To understand why, it did what it does best—collect and analyze data. It created Project Aristotle and spent millions of dollars to gather mountains of data from 180 teams across the company. The only thing more surprising than what it found was what it didn’t find.

What Did Google Expect to Find?

Google sliced and diced the team data looking for patterns that would distinguish the most successful from the less successful teams. It expected that some combination of team member characteristics would reveal the optimal team profile. Such a profile or pattern never emerged. Google examined seemingly everything, such as team composition (team member personality, experience, age, gender, and education), how frequently teammates ate lunch together and with whom, their social networks within the company, how often they socialized outside the office, whether they shared hobbies, and team managers’ leadership styles.

It also tested the belief that the best teams were made up of the best individual contributors, or that they paired introverts with introverts and friends with friends. To the researchers’ amazement, these assumptions were simply popular wisdom. In sum, “the ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.” Even more puzzling was that “two teams might have nearly identical makeups, with overlapping memberships, but radically different levels of effectiveness,”2  said Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division.

What Did the Company Actually Find?

It turned out it wasn’t so much who was in the group but the way the group functioned or operated that made the performance difference. Group norms—expected behaviors for individuals and the larger team—helped explain why two groups with similar membership function very differently. But this finding was only the beginning. Now Google needed to identify the operative norms.

Members of the Project Aristotle team began looking for team member data referring to factors such as unwritten rules, treatment of fellow team members, ways they communicated in meetings, and ways they expressed value and concern for one another. Dozens of potential norms emerged, but unfortunately the norms of one successful team often conflicted with those of another.

To help explain this finding, the Project Aristotle team reviewed existing research on teams and learned that work teams that showed success on one task often succeed at most. Those that performed poorly on one task typically performed poorly on others. This helped confirm their conclusion that norms were the key. However, they still couldn’t identify the particular norms that boosted performance or explain the seemingly conflicting norms of similarly successful teams.

Then came a breakthrough. After intense analysis, two behaviors emerged. First, all high-functioning teams allowed members to speak in roughly the same proportion. Granted, they did this in many different ways, from taking turns to having a moderator orchestrate discussions, but the end result was the same—everybody got a turn. Second, the members of successful teams seemed to be good at sensing other team members’ emotions, through either their tone of voice, their expressions, or other nonverbal cues.

Having identified these two key norms, the Project Aristotle team was able to conclude that many other team inputs and processes were far less important or didn’t matter at all. Put another way, teams could be very different in a host of ways, but so long as everybody got and took a turn when communicating, and members were sensitive to each other, then each had a chance of being a top-performing team. With this knowledge in hand, now came the hard part. How to instill these norms in work teams at Google?

How could Google instill the appropriate communication practices, as well as build empathy into their teams’ dynamics?

Apply the 3-Step Problem-Solving Approach to OB

Step 1: Define the problem.

Step 2: Identify causes of the problem by using material from this chapter, which has been summarized in the Organizing Framework for Chapter 8 and is shown in Figure 8.8. Causes will tend to show up in either the Inputs box or the Processes box.

Step 3: Make your recommendations for solving the problem. Consider whether you want to resolve it, solve it, or dissolve it (see Section 1.5). Which recommendation is desirable and feasible?

Footnotes

1. C. Duhigg, “What Google Learned from its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” The New York Times, February 25, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html.

2. Ibid.

analyzing operational data

Purpose 

This assignment is intended to help you learn how to apply statistical methods when analyzing operational data, evaluating the performance of current marketing strategies, and recommending actionable business decisions. This is an opportunity to build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills within the context of data analysis and interpretation. You’ll gain a first-hand understanding of how data analytics supports decision-making and adds value to an organization.

Scenario: 

Pastas R Us, Inc. is a fast-casual restaurant chain specializing in noodle-based dishes, soups, and salads. Since its inception, the business development team has favored opening new restaurants in areas (within a 3-mile radius) that satisfy the following demographic conditions:

  • Median age between 25 – 45 years old
  • Household median income above national average
  • At least 15% college educated adult population

Last year, the marketing department rolled out a Loyalty Card strategy to increase sales. Under this program, customers present their Loyalty Card when paying for their orders and receive some free food after making 10 purchases.

The company has collected data from its 74 restaurants to track important variables such as average sales per customer, year-on-year sales growth, sales per sq. ft., Loyalty Card usage as a percentage of sales, and others. A key metric of financial performance in the restaurant industry is annual sales per sq. ft. For example, if a 1200 sq. ft. restaurant recorded $2 million in sales last year, then it sold $1,667 per sq. ft.

Executive management wants to know whether the current expansion criteria can be improved. They want to evaluate the effectiveness of the Loyalty Card marketing strategy and identify feasible, actionable opportunities for improvement. As a member of the analytics department, you’ve been assigned the responsibility of conducting a thorough statistical analysis of the company’s available database to answer executive management’s questions.

Report: 

Write a 750-word statistical report that includes the following sections:

  • Section 1: Scope and descriptive statistics
  • Section 2: Analysis
  • Section 3: Recommendations and Implementation

Section 1 – Scope and descriptive statistics

  • State the report’s objective.
  • Discuss the nature of the current database. What variables were analyzed?
  • Summarize your descriptive statistics findings from Excel. Use a table and insert appropriate graphs.

Section 2 – Analysis

  • Using Excel, create scatter plots and display the regression equations for the following pairs of variables:
  • “BachDeg%” versus “Sales/SqFt”
  • “MedIncome” versus “Sales/SqFt”
  • “MedAge” versus “Sales/SqFt”
  • “LoyaltyCard(%)” versus “SalesGrowth(%)”
  • In your report, include the scatter plots. For each scatter plot, designate the type of relationship observed (increasing/positive, decreasing/negative, or no relationship) and determine what you can conclude from these relationships.

Section 3: Recommendations and implementation

  • Based on your findings above, assess which expansion criteria seem to be more effective.Could any expansion criterion be changed or eliminated? If so, which one and why?
  • Based on your findings above, does it appear as if the Loyalty Card is positively correlated with sales growth? Would you recommend changing this marketing strategy?
  • Based on your previous findings, recommend marketing positioning that targets a specific demographic. (Hint: Are younger people patronizing the restaurants more than older people?)
  • Indicate what information should be collected to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your recommendations. How can this data be collected? (Hint: Would you use survey/samples or census?)

Cite references to support your assignment.

  • attachment

    PastasRUs.xlsx
  • attachment

    PastasRUs1-Week1.xlsx

Self-Reflection Report

Final Written Self-Reflection Report

At the end of the quarter, you’ll post to Blackboard an approximately 500-word, single-spaced written

report outlining the concepts from the course which you’ve found most meaningful and describing how

you anticipate incorporating these new concepts into your professional, academic or personal

communications. Please submit as a single-spaced, informal informational report in an email format.

This submittal will be graded considering both the content as well as the quality of the writing. I’ll

consider use of writing conventions (grammar, spelling, and sentence construction), the presentation

and organization of your ideas, compliance with the specifications of the assignment, and the

incorporation of all of the business writing best practices that we’ll discuss in this course.

Use Grammarly (www.grammarly.com ), and make indicated corrections, prior to submitting your paper.

  • attachment

    ex1.docx
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    ex2.docx
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    ex3.docx
  • attachment

    Chapter1Upload.pptx
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    Chapter21.pptx
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    Chapter3.pptx
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    Chapter51.pptx
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    Chapter6.pptx

Create a 2-page executive summary explaining to your staff the significant of stocking

Create a 2-page executive summary explaining to your staff the significant of stocking

Read the following scenario:

Dr. Smith has a full morning of minor office surgeries scheduled for today. Sarah, his nurse, has set up the room and prepared the patient. Prior to starting, Dr. Smith requests anesthetic without epinephrine due to the location of the surgical site. Searching the drawers and supply closet, Sarah reports, “We don’t have any.”

Fortunately, Sarah was able to borrow a vial from the physician in an adjacent office suite. Investigation by the office manager reveals that the supply was not reordered when the previous stock was disposed of due to its expiration date. This disruption in supply chain management resulted in an inefficient use of physician time and an uncomfortable situation in the presence of a patient.

Create a 2-page executive summary explaining to your staff the significant of stocking, placing timely orders, and provide a step by step method on what to do in order to avoid this type of situation in Dr. Smith’s office.

Gather your research from at least 2 sources other than your textbook. Cite your sources using APA guidelines. All submitted work should be free of grammatical errors.

Make a proposal for future research on the topic that needs to be investigated.

  1. Make a proposal for future research on the topic that needs to be investigated.

This week deals with capital structure, limits of debts and effect on firm value. To understand the theory, evidence of problems and how to deal with the problem, you will review this article and respond to the questions:

Cole, C., & Yan, Y., & Hemley, C. (2015). Does capital structure impact firm performance: An empirical study of three U.S. sectors. Journal of Accounting and Finance, 15(6), 57 – 65

  •  The article is attached above.

Address the following questions as you read the article:

  1. What corporate finance problem is the article addressing?
  2. What method of study (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed study) does the authors use to address the problem?
  3. What are the significant findings or ideas of the study?
  4. What is the conclusion of the study? Do the findings support the conclusion?
  5. What are the strengths and limitations of the study?
  6. Make a proposal for future research on the topic that needs to be investigated.
  • attachment

    TheImpactofCapitalStructureonFinancialPerformance.pdf