Category: Management homework help

 
Develop a strategic plan for the company you have used throughout this course and share it with stakeholders, The company is Family Dollar
Create a 15-slide Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation with visuals and speaker notes for key stakeholders to solicit their approval of your strategic plan. The objective is to sell the strategic plan to investors or company directors. Address the following in your presentation: 
An introduction with mission and vision statements
Core values, ethics, and social responsibility principles
Analysis of the company’s:
Internal environment (e.g. strengths and weaknesses related to resources, trademarks, patents, copyrights, or current processes)
External environment (e.g. opportunities and threats related to market trends, economic trends, demographics, or regulations)
An evaluation of the internal and external environment’s impact on achieving the company strategy
Create a strategic objective for the company.
Create short- and long-term goals for achieving the company’s strategic plan.
Determine methods for collecting data and measuring the success of the strategic plan.
Include APA-formatted in-text citations and a reference page.
Cite at least 3 peer-reviewed documents.

Final Project Charter (Due Week 7)Attached Files:

 BADM 634 – Project Charter Final 8wk.docx BADM 634 – Project Charter Final 8wk.docx – Alternative Formats (33.654 KB)
A Final Project Charter, based on your Problem Set exercises, will be due by the end of Week 7. This will require amending and improving your Problem Sets based on Instructor feedback and then compiling the required tools into a professional document. As a professional document this should be your own work and wording based on your selected project. There should not be any reason for citing of sources. Also, any cover or title page should be a professional cover/title page and not an academic title page. To allow sufficient time to complete the necessary corrections or amendments based on instructor feedback the instructions for this assignment have been provided within the attached document. This assignment will be worth 200 points.

Problem Set #6
Attached Files:

 Risk Register Template.docx Risk Register Template.docx – Alternative Formats (19.034 KB)
Risk Register ExerciseThis week’s exercise will be to create a Risk Register for your selected project. Additional instructions are in the Word template. You must use the template provided.You will complete the attached Risk Register in attached template. A risk needs to be identified for each of your six (6) Key Deliverables (this would be listed under the Category column). This needs to be a thorough, well thought out risk register which provides detailed thought and consideration. An example of the Risk Register is available in Exhibit 11.9 on page 370 of the textbook.The following is a description of what should go under each column.Risk Description: Identify the Risk associated with the Deliverable.Impact: This is a narrative of potential impact if the risk should occur.Category: This will be the associated DeliverableProbability: This is a score of 1-5. A score of 1 would be if the probability of the risk occurring is very slight and a score of 5 is that is will almost likely occur.Impact: This is a score of 1-5. A score of 1 would be the impact would have little impact if the risk occurs and a score of 5 would be catastrophic impact if risk event occurs.
Score: This is the Probability multiplied by the Impact.Response Strategy/Solution: This should be a detailed plan on how to either limit the Probability of the risk event from occurring and/or a plan to reduce the Impact if it does occur. This must include direct correlation to the scores assigned to Probability/Impact. At least one of the risk response strategies from the textbook must be identified with course of action provided based on identified risk.

 Discuss the ethical implications of a leader’s role in the socialization of new hires into the preexisting culture of an organization. What responsibility does a company have to inform newly hired persons that it wants to shape their values, perceptions, and behavior to conform to the organization’s culture? What impact does the leader’s informed values and individual behavior have on organizational effectiveness? Considering the Christian concept of putting others before oneself as well as what you have learned in this course about servant leadership and conscious capitalism; explain the impact on company culture and organizational effectiveness. 

 
Wk 2 Discussion 1 – Transactional and Transformative Leadership
Write a 250- to 300-word response to the following:
Describe the key principles of transactional and transformational leadership. Do you consider these leadership styles to be mutually exclusive? Based on your experience in a current or previous leadership role, analyze ways in which your leadership style could be considered a blend of transactional and transformational. 

Integrative Learning Project: Outline Assignment Instructions
You will create a well-developed outline including all paper headings and subheadings. 
Review the Integrative Learning Project Assignment Instructions. 
Use it as a guide for what headings need to be included in this outline. 
At a minimum, the APA level 1, 2 and 3 headings should be in the outline and it must show which Key Chapter Concepts will be in your Integrated Learning Project as well as the titles of the appendices. 
Please review the Integrated Learning Project General Instructions. 
Current APA format must be used. 

Weeks 3 & 4 – Assignment
One of the tools and techniques used in executing is the acquistion of “Virtual Teams”. We will utilize this tool in the simulation next week.  But as a pre-cursor to next week’s simulation activity, write a 1-page document explaining the importance, value, and positive impact the acquisition of “Virtual Teams” can have on a project team’s resource pool.
Use of proper APA formatting and citations. If supporting evidence from outside resources is used those must be properly cited. A minimum of 7 sources  from scholarly articles or business periodicals is required.
Include your best critical thinking and analysis to arrive at your justification.
Approach the assignment from the perspective of a project management of a company.

 
This activity is important because, as a strategic leader, you must be able to guide your company toward effective strategic positions of cost leadership, differentiation or a blue ocean strategy.
The goal of this exercise is to illustrate the risks of attempting a blue ocean strategy.
Read the following case on JCPenney and then answer the questions that follow.
JCPenney was once one of the top department stores in the United States, with more than 2,000 locations at its peak. Indeed, the retailer was so common in the suburbs that one could not imagine a shopping mall without a JCPenney. Generations of America’s children were mesmerized by its annual holiday catalog. As recent as 2007, JCPenney had enjoyed a market valuation of $18 billion. In a bit over a decade, JCPenney’s market cap had fallen to a mere $269 million. Thus, the retailer lost 98.5 percent of its valuation or $17.7 billion in a bit over decade. Many observers expect JCPenney to follow Sears—once the leading American retailer—to also file for bankruptcy, which Sears did in 2018. What went wrong?
Of course, all retailers are exposed to the same threat, Amazon, which has become synonymous with online shopping. Although Walmart, Target, and Best Buy all have become more competitive in recent years, JCPenney sped up its own demise with a bad business strategy. In particular, under former CEO Ron Johnson, JCPenney learned the hard way how difficult it is to change a strategic position. When hired as JCPenney’s CEO in 2011, Johnson was hailed as a star executive. Johnson was poached from Apple, where he had created and led Apple’s retail stores since 2000. Apple’s stores are the most successful retail outlets globally in terms of sales per square foot. No other retail outlet, not even luxury jewelers, achieves more. This poaching didn’t come cheap: JCPenney paid Ron Johnson close to $53 million in total compensation in 2011, even though he didn’t start until November of that year.
Once on board with JCPenney, Johnson immediately began to change the company’s strategic position from a cost-leadership to a blue ocean strategy, attempting to combine its traditional cost-leadership position with a differentiation position. In particular, he tried to reposition the department store more toward the high end by providing an improved customer experience and more exclusive merchandise through in-store boutiques. Johnson ordered all clearance racks with steeply discounted merchandise, common in JCPenney stores, to be removed. He also did away with JCPenney’s long-standing practice of mailing discount coupons to its customers. Rather than following industry best practice by testing the more drastic strategic moves in a small number of selected stores, Johnson implemented them in all of the then 1,800 stores at once. When one executive raised the issue of pretesting, Johnson bristled and responded: “We didn’t test at Apple.”1 Under his leadership, JCPenney also got embroiled in a legal battle with Macy’s because of Johnson’s attempt to lure away homemaking maven Martha Stewart and her exclusive merchandise collection.
The envisioned blue ocean strategy failed badly, and JCPenney ended up being stuck in the middle. Within 12 months with Johnson at the helm, JCPenney’s sales dropped by 25 percent. In a hypercompetitive industry such as retailing where every single percent of market share counts, this was a landslide. Things went from bad to worse. In 2013, JCPenney’s stock performed so poorly it was dropped from the S&P 500 index. Less than 18 months into his new job, Johnson was fired. JCPenney had lost over two-thirds of its market valuation (or $6 billion) under Johnson’s leadership. The attempted overhaul of JCPenney under Johnson also left the company burdened with more than $4 billion in debt. Myron Ullman, his predecessor, was brought out of retirement as a temporary replacement.
Under Johnson’s leadership, JCPenney failed at its attempted blue ocean strategy and instead sailed deeper into the red ocean of bloody competition. This highlights the perils of attempting a blue ocean strategy because of the inherent trade-offs in the underlying generic business strategies of cost leadership and differentiation. As a result, JCPenney continues to experience a sustained competitive disadvantage and may go out of business.
To turn around the 120-year-old icon, the board appointed Marvin Ellison as CEO in 2015. With a strong background in operations management and leadership skills honed at The Home Depot, he focused on lowering JCPenney’s cost structure while increasing perceived value offered to its customers. In an attempt to stem losses, in 2017 JCPenney closed some 140 retail stores across the United States out of a total of 1,000 remaining outlets. Marvin Ellison was lured back into the home improvement industry when he was appointed CEO of Lowe’s in 2018.
In October 2018, Jill Soltau was appointed CEO of JCPenney. She was previously the CEO of Jo-Ann Stores, a fabric-and-craft retailer. Her new business strategy is not yet clear, and several top executive positions were still vacant as of spring 2019. Soltau retained McKinsey, a strategy consulting firm, to help with the turnaround. One question she faces is whether to continue selling appliances, which her predecessor brought back in 2016 to take away sales from failing Sears. JCPenney had discontinued sales of appliances in 1983 to focus on apparel, and the majority of JCPenney’s sales still come from apparel, an area the retailer has neglected in recent years, even though JCPenney was once the go-to apparel retailer for American middle-class families. Whether Soltau will successfully sharpen JCPenney’s strategic position and thus make the American icon competitive again remains to be seen.
**JCPenney filed for bankruptcy in May 2020, after the publication of this case.
AFTER READING THE CASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
While all brick-and-mortar retailers face the threat of Amazon and online shopping in general, why did JCPenney perform so poorly while other retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, or Target fare better?
Ron Johnson was hailed as a star executive at Apple, where he led the company’s highly successful retail arm. As CEO of JCPenney, he applied the “Apple playbook,” for example, moving JCPenney toward the higher end of the market or going with hunches (“we didn’t test at Apple”), rather than applying more traditional decision making. Why did his attempt to change JCPenney’s strategic position from cost-leadership to a blue ocean strategy fail so spectacularly? What are some of the lessons?
You are part of the McKinsey strategy consulting team that the new CEO, Jill Soltau, retained to help turn around JCPenney. What recommendations would you give her? In particular, what type of business strategy would you want JCPenney to pursue, and how would you make the changes necessary? Be specific.

Problem Set #3
Attached Files:

 Stakeholder Reg – Comm Matrix.docx Stakeholder Reg – Comm Matrix.docx – Alternative Formats (20.434 KB)
See attached document for instructions

Evaluations allow leaders to identify areas of opportunity and improvements, leverage resources, and enhance managerial decision-making for new products or services. One responsibility of the innovation consultant may be to complete a SWOT analysis. This analysis provides a comprehensive look at what the organization is achieving and where they can improve organizational performance. From there, the organization can decide on additional products or services to offer to consumers.
As the innovation consultant for your selected business, your first project is to assist the organization in improving its performance by analyzing its challenges and successes. Guiding your team, you must either generate a new product, service, or process, or update an existing product, service, or process as a resolution to the organization’s current challenge.  
 
Preparation
Perform a SWOT analysis for your selected business and use it to:
Determine the need for change in your selected business.
Identify 1 challenge within the business that you will address as part of your business plan.
 
Assessment Deliverable
Write a 525- to 700-word report for the department manager in which you:
Include the SWOT analysis you conducted and your completed SWOT table.
Analyze the current challenge you will address as part of your business plan.
Justify how you determined the current challenge you will address as part of your business plan.
Propose a solution (e.g., the introduction of a new or updated process, product, or service) for your business’s challenge. Note: This proposed solution will be used throughout the course assessments.
Justify the implications of your recommended solution to enhance organizational outcomes.  
Incorporate at least three properly cited sources with in-text citations from peer-reviewed Journal Articles (you will likely need more than three) in addition to any other non peer-reviewed references in accordance with Announcements #2, #4 and #6.
 
Review the Find or Create a SWOT Analysis page and Business Source Complete database from the University Library for guidance on working with SWOT analyses.
Remember that title and reference pages do not count toward word minimums.
Cite sources to support your summative assessment.
 
Format citations and references according to APA guidelines. 
TIP 1: BEFORE STARTING THIS ASSIGNMENT, REVIEW THE GRADING CRITERIA IN THE RUBRIC PAYING PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE PERCENTAGE OF THE GRADE FOR EACH SECTION.
TIP 2: For any claims that you make in your deliverable that are not common knowledge, make sure you properly cite where that statement/information came from. This is how all APA assignments should be done. This is what makes your documents academically credible; shows that your statements are supported by research (not uninformed opinions); and demonstrate an appropriate amount of rigor. So, the likelihood is that you will need more than three references.
TIP 3: Make sure to use in-text citations FOR EVERY REFERENCE to link your references to the statements you are citing.
I want to highlight some frequent mistakes I generally see in my classes as soon as possible to set everyone up for success for this course.
All aspects of any briefing/paper must be in APA.
This includes Title Page, Opening para, Body (with section headings), conclusion and reference page.
Consistent margins/fonts/etc., proper in-text citations, and a properly formatted reference page.
All briefings/papers must have at least three PEER-REVIEWED sources from an ACADEMIC JOURNAL.
Using peer-reviewed sources enhances academic credibility by ensuring that the information presented has undergone rigorous evaluation by experts in the field. Peer review involves subjecting scholarly work to scrutiny by other professionals with relevant expertise before it is published. This process helps to maintain high standards of quality and reliability in academic literature by verifying the accuracy, validity, and significance of the research findings. As a result, citing peer-reviewed sources strengthens the credibility of academic arguments, demonstrating that the information has been vetted and endorsed by the scholarly community. This practice promotes trustworthiness and integrity in academic discourse, reinforcing the foundation of knowledge upon which further research and understanding are built.
Body of the Paper/Briefing: For each assignment, you need to have a section heading/slide that directly corresponds/aligns to the bullet points in the assignment instructions. So, if the assignment has 5 bullet points to address, your paper/briefing should have 5 section headers/slides that match up with those assignment requirements (don’t cut/paste the bullet points into the paper, turn them into a proper heading).
Don’t forget the intro para and a conclusion
If you do this, the chance of getting a good grade is increased exponentially. It will keep you from leaving anything out
Most important…answer/address the bullet points. DO NOT skimp on detail. Speaker notes should be a solid/robust paragraph or two. A few sentences will not be sufficient.
Support your opinions with APA sources from the UoP Library, they have everything you need. Use proper in-text citations.
Remember that title and reference pages do not count toward word minimums.
Class, here’s a couple of things to get you started…
Remember that books, newspapers, magazines, and general text on a web site are not peer-reviewed sources. Please be mindful of that for your discussion answers. I don’t want you to lose points for that.
When selecting a company for the week one assignment, remember that the company you select will be used for ALL remaining delivrables throughout the rest of the course.
Before deciding on that company, make sure to review the rest of the assignments all the way through week 6 so you know now what you will be asked to do.
MOST IMPORTANT: For all of your assignments, you MUST cite any uncommon facts in your work for it to be considered credible. Understand that when I read your work, my first couple questions will be “How do you know that?” or “according to who…?” So the minimum number of references will probably not be enough.