...M. (2011). Strategic Staffing (2nd ed.). Pearson/Prentice Hall. ISBN-10: 0136109748 ISBN-13: 978-0136109747 We will also be using Sakai for the course. Instructions are below. Please check Sakai for the most current syllabus and weekly assignments. Using Sakai 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Go to: http://sakai.rutgers.edu Login using your Rutgers netid and password Click on the TAB “Managing Workforce Flow” If you do not see the TAB “Managing Workforce Flow”, contact me at jeanp@rci.rutgers.edu as you may not be on the roster. Click on Resources to download the current syllabus and other course material. Evaluation Grades will be determined on the basis of 4 factors that will be weighted as follows: 1) Participation 2) Midterm 3) Final Exam 40 Chern’s Case Study 10% 30% 30% 30% 100% The midterm and final exam will together account for 60% of your grade. The nature of the exams will be discussed in more detail in...
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...MGT 701.01 BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, & SOCIETY Tuesdays, Thursdays 9:40-11:00 AM Classroom: Paul G25 University of New Hampshire Fall 2015 |Instructor: Professor Dev Dutta, Ph.D. |Admn. Assistant: Nancy Palmer | |Office: 255 D Paul College Hall |Office: 337 Paul College | |Phone: (603) 862-2944 |Phone: (603) 862-3371 | |Email: Dev.Dutta@unh.edu |Email: Nancy.Palmer@unh.edu | 1. OFFICE HOURS You are welcome to meet me at my office anytime during the term by scheduling a prior appointment. Whenever you feel a need, please email me on any aspect of the course and I will try and respond to you as quickly as I can. 2. REQUIRED READING MATERIAL The custom e-book for the course is as follows: Title: Business, Government, Society Publisher: McGraw Hill ISBN: 9781308623580 Instructions to purchase the book: 1. Go to http://create.mheducation.com/shop/ 2. Search for and select book by Title/ISBN. 3. Add the book to your cart and pay using a credit card. I expect the students to thoroughly and critically read the assigned reading material before they come to class. Students should be prepared to discuss the material as part of class participation. In addition...
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...GlaxoSmithKline “In an environment where competitive advantage relies on process efficiency and speed to market, an outsourced model for Corporate Information helps to give this pharmaceutical giant the edge.” Leading pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), is on course to make substantial savings through Williams Lea’s UK-wide output strategy. Williams Lea enables the client to embrace technological change while delivering significant cost savings and process improvements. Headquartered in the UK, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a world-leading research-based pharmaceutical company. Williams Lea has been providing corporate information solutions to GSK’s legacy companies for six years, particularly in the production of submission documents and case report forms (CRFs), both business-critical elements of the drug development process. The challenge GSK’s success is underpinned by the effective time to market of its new medicines. Spiralling research and development costs in the race to bring new drugs to market place primary focus on investing first and foremost in science, minimising business support costs where possible. The solution As GSK’s strategic partner for UK reprographics, Williams Lea rose to this challenge. A 12-month programme of process re-engineering was initiated to significantly improve management of clinical trial documents across the organisation, speeding up the process without compromising document quality and personalisation. With the objective of consolidating and...
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...Q&A Introduction CASE = AMAZON.COM IN YEAR 2000 Version: 4/12/10 This case analyzes Amazon’s growth strategies up to June 2000, and critiques Lehman Brothers’ credit analyst Ravi Suria’s report of that month. Suria report was one of the first to be publicly critical of the cash flow prospects Amazon and the dot com sector in general. He did this because he was a credit analyst and Amazon was rare among dot coms to have a lot of debt. The case provides a variety of learning opportunities: (1) an evaluation of a company’s strategy and performance from a credit analysis perspective; (2) an appreciation of the potential value of contrarian thinking in fundamental analysis; and (3) the analysis of the type of strategies and market conditions that fueled the dot com bubble. Q1. 1.1 Regarding the long-term viability of Amazon's business per the case: What was Amazon’s original business model? (2 pts) I shall define a for-profit firm’s business model as the set of plans and strategies for the future that the firm has in place for earning at least normal profitability in the long run. Viewed through the lens of a statement of cash flows, a business model requires: Plans for financing; strategies for converting the cash raised by financing into investments of tangible and/or intangible assets; and strategies for generating abnormal profits from those assets through operations. Note that in their investing and operating activities, firms are less likely to be price takers...
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...ACE Challenge 2015 Amazon Confidential Preliminary Round: ACE Case Breakers Case Study: Operations Introduction It is a bright autumn morning in 2205 and Gaurav Maurya, SVP – Amazon Enceladus1, is gazing outside the window and reminiscing about how Blue Origin2 had transformed Enceladus into a bustling human colony in a short span of 50 years, much like some of the developing countries back on Earth. Also, continuing Amazon’s legacy, Amazon.en has become Enceladus’s most customer-centric company in a short span of one year and customers love to buy all sorts of products on it every day. Gaurav is scheduled to meet the Board of Directors back on Earth in 3 days to present the first year report. For this meeting, Gaurav has decided to focus on operations, and on how different verticals within operations are helping raise the bar on customer experience. Gaurav enlisted four of his team members to share their stories. As Gaurav prepares for the meeting, he has asked you to take a look at the reports that his team has put together and help him answer some open questions and come up with fresh ideas on how to solve the problems. Scenario 1: Like on Earth, Amazon’s goal is to offer Enceladus’ largest selection on Amazon.en. Deonn, who recently joined Amazon.en wants to accelerate the addition of new products in the catalogue. While Amazon already provides tools for vendors to submit their items in the catalogue, the error rate remains high. On an average, vendors...
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...Barnes & Noble Vs. Amazon To attain a competitive advantage over Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble needs to develop a proper strategy and implement a successful marketing plan. SITUATION ANALYSIS Barnes & Noble first must consider the issues and problems facing their company, and then perform an opportunity analysis to determine their strengths and weaknesses in relation to their customers, competitors, and company capabilities. In regards to the main concerns of Barnes & Noble, the company needs to worry about the uncertainties associated with the expected rapid growth of the Internet, the changing profile of Internet users, increased competition and indeterminate future developments in electronic retailing from publishers, wholesalers, and retailers, and intense price competition. By 2000, more than 80 million users will be on the World Wide Web, with an increase in females and a broader spectrum of education levels and age, changing the market demographics. Additionally, some book publishers, namely Simon & Schuster and Bertelsmann, have expanded online, while the national leading wholesaler, Ingram, is developing a website where wholesalers could ship directly to consumers. In the meantime, small publishers and universities have started to publish directly on the Web, avoiding print versions completely and thereby challenging the posterity of conventional books. Within the Barnes & Noble Corporation, their smaller traditional bookstores such...
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...and 2014 update I’ve used Amazon as a case study in my books for over 10 years now since I think all types of businesses can learn from their digital business strategy. From startups and small businesses to large international businesses, their focus on the customer, testing market opportunities made available by digital technology and their focus on testing and analysis to improve results. I aim to keep this case study up-to-date for readers of the books and Smart Insights readers who may be interested. In it we look at Amazon’s background, revenue model and sources for the latest business results. We can also learn from their approach to digital marketing since they use digital marketing efficiently across all customer communications touchpoints in our RACE marketing planning framework: * Reach: Amazon’s initial business growth based on detailed approach to SEO and AdWords targeting millions of keywords. * Act: Creating a clear simple experiences through testing and learning. * Convert: Using personalisation to make relevant recommendations and a clear checkout process that many now imitate. * Engage: Their focus on customer experience, “Customer Obsession” as they call it is shown by the way they consistently outperform other retailers in their ACSI customer satisfaction rating too. We have our own internal experimentation platform called “Weblab” that we use to evaluate improvements Experiments and more experiments! Amazon have created their own internal...
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...percent annual growth in web usage. He could see that the Internet, which was in its infancy in 1994, would soon become ubiquitous. Features of the book industry made it ideal to focus on selling books, at least initially. The book industry was fragmented, both in terms of the large number of booksellers and publishers. In addition, there were millions of titles and potential customers. The typical bookstore could house a small fraction of all published books, so Amazon.com could market itself as the earth’s largest bookstore. Amazon is the leading online book selling retailer in the USA. Amazon expanded from just a bookstore into selling general electronics, music, videos, toys, apparel, food, and furniture. Amazon has also established separate websites all over the world. (Amazon, 2011) Amazon also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products. Amazon focuses on customer satisfaction, and the efficiency of their website. Amazon now provides almost anything you can think of. When Bezos founded Amazon.com, he focused on hiring talented and unconventional managers and employees. Amazon.com had rigorous requirements for new employees and an obsession for customer service. Amazon.com told temp agencies ‘‘send us your freaks’’ (Spector 2002, 113). The hiring of talented employees was coupled with an austere culture, exemplified by the use of desks made of doors and 2X4s. These desks were initially used because they were inexpensive and later because they...
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...Assignment #2: Amazon.Com’s E-Business Model Je’neen A. Wilson, B.S. The Business Enterprise – BUS508 Strayer University – White Marsh Prof. A. Kobina Armoo Has Amazon Lost Its Identity? Amazon.com is a famous Internet retail company in E-commerce. Its business includes B2B and B2C. It opened its business in July 1996. Today, Amazon.com has expanded its business in more than two hundred and twenty countries and this company sells various products like electronics, books, music, DVD, House wares, PCs and cars (Amazon.com Announces 4th Quarter Profit 2002). It is the biggest retail store in E-commerce. Even though Amazon.com owns these accolades, this company is struggling to survive. Amazon.com had a $19 billion market value before its stock prices decreased from $75.25 to $9.25 (German, 2001). The problem is that Amazon still has not made real profits since it opened. How to help Amazon.com keep standing on the stage? If Amazon.com wants to survive in E-business and start making real profits, Amazon.com should merge with other retail companies, operate a new E-business strategy, and rebuild its financial structure. Business strategies and activities play a very crucial role in the future development of the organization. These strategies become more important, in case of e-business organization such as Amazon. Every organization uses different business strategies in order to remain in business. Some adopt customer- centric strategies; some uses strategies to maximize their...
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...move to online stores to increase profits and decrease expenses. Amazon is a company that has taken it to new heights in terms of how they perform business. Their prices are low due to the fact that they do not have very much inventory. They work with other companies to help provide them exposure for their business in exchange for lower prices for their products. However a fierce competitor in terms of size and resources not to mention media and other digital information is Google. It has been spending mass amounts of money in order to compete and possibly take down Amazon. Below is a comparison of both the giant corporation’s financial story. The facts and figures in this report are based on the 2014 fiscal year as per the references listed at the end of the report. Profitability Ratios Gross Margin Google Amazon ($66,001,000,000-49,905,000,000) (88,908,000,000-63,880,000,000)/88,908,000,000=%28.15 /66,001,000,000=%24.39 Because it shows company retains after incurring the direct costs associated with producing the goods and services sold by a company. Amazon is more efficient than Google. The numbers are slightly higher on Amazons side due to more products and items are sold as compared to services or apps. Google has the App store but Amazon also has Amazon Prime as well as numerous other services. They both compare fairly equal in terms of services and goods. Operating Margin Google Amazon $4.4B/66,001,000,000 =6.6% 178,000/88,908,000,000=.008% After...
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...Term Viability of Amazon Amazon had a significant vision in terms of its long-term viability. This vision consisted of many strategies that allowed them to operate efficiently and effectively. Amazon primarily raised profits by the means of developing strong brand equity on a global scale, developing direct relationship with wholesalers allowing them to reduce inventory shipping/holding costs supported by an excellent logistic system, which permitted them to deliver any and every product fast. They also started up this venture when the Internet market was just emerging, therefore allowing them to be one of the pioneers of this business. Amazon also pursued a strategy to incur huge loses in the current time period, in order to gain profits for the future “high the risk, higher the return”. The company chose to go down this route primarily to gain majority of the market share in the online book-selling sector. These strategies however raise a question as to why and how Amazon is performing while implementing these strategies. Are they invincible or just ‘cooking books” and becoming another Enron. Significant concerns go towards the brand equity, which is an intangible asset, however the company places dedicates majority of the profitability to this aspect of the venture. Another question, which concerns Amazon is the barrier to new entrants, as mentioned in the case at the given period the new entrants could easily setup a similar business and compete with Amazon, as at that period...
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...Computing in the “cloud” alludes to ubiquitous and inexhaustible on-demand IT resources accessible through the Internet. Practically every new Internet-based service from Gmail [1] to Amazon Web Services [2] to Microsoft Online Services [3] to even Facebook [4] have been labeled “cloud” offerings, either officially or externally. Although cloud computing has garnered significant interest, factors such as unclear terminology, non-existent product “paper launches”, and opportunistic marketing have led to a significant lack of clarity surrounding discussions of cloud computing technology and products. The need for clarity is well-recognized within the industry [5] and by industry observers [6]. Perhaps more importantly, due to the relative infancy of the industry, currently-available product offerings are not standardized. Neither providers nor potential consumers really know what a “good” cloud computing product offering should look like and what classes of products are appropriate. Consequently, products are not easily comparable. The scope of various product offerings differ and overlap in complicated ways – for example, Amazon’s EC2 service [7] and Google’s App Engine [8] partially overlap in scope and applicability. EC2 is more flexible but also lower-level, while App Engine subsumes some functionality in Amazon Web Services suite of offerings [2] external to EC2. On balance, App Engine incorporates that functionality at the expense of being less general-purpose and more...
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...In 2005, Amazon measured the inter-company balances, making use of the exchange rates at the specific reporting dates and recorded a massive loss of $47 Million, against the gains of $41 Million in 2004, and $36 Million in 2003. This has been accounted to a great deal to the currency adjustments. (Amazon Annual Report 2005) In 2006, the net cash provided for operating activities was $702 Million. There was an increase in the Marketing costs, compared to 2005 and 2004, as an outcome of a rise in spending for variable channels of online marketing in activities such as sponsored search, Associated program, and other variable initiatives in Marketing(Amazon Annual Report 2006) . In 2007, Amazon Kindle was introduced to the customers, which was a reading device built with purpose, and had wireless access to over 110,000 books, blogs, magazines, and newspaper. Amazon had hoped that Kindle will be well received, but the entire stock was sold out within the first five and half hours, and the entire supply chain and the production team had to work hard and fast to recreate the stock to cater to the demands in the market for Kindle. This shows that Amazon had once again aligned its business to customer centrism through creation of an innovative device, by understanding the customers’ needs of what they do not know but they want. This directly impacted the publishing industry and necessitated the need for creating E-books, for Kindle reading, increasing the sale of books, again impacting...
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...Burgers 1989). Companies pursuing related diversification over a period of time have achieved superior performance than companies following an unrelated diversification (Palepu 1985). Amazon has started its business by selling books and music, soon after it incorporated online auctions for airlines tickets and hotel rooms, computer hardware, pet food and pet accessories, electronic cards, toys and consumer electronics. Whereas Amazon has achieved very high volume of sales and gained important market shares in the book industry, the company has never been profitable. As a result, in this essay, in order to determine if Amazon’s decision to diversify so extensively was a wise decision, we will firstly describe the firm business model and the reasons for its success. We will then try to determine if this business model is applicable to Amazon’s diversification strategy as well as the limit of diversification. And finally we will try to evaluate the limit of such strategy in an international context. I Is the business model designed for selling book on internet apply for different category of products? The success of Amazon Business Model In e-tailing, one can identify four kinds of business models: the channel supporter, the vertical portal and the category killer such as Amazon. In this regard, Calkins, Farello and Smith Shi (2000) identify three fundamentals of on-line...
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...Calculators, lemmings or frame-makers? The intermediary role of securities analysts Daniel Beunza and Raghu Garud Introduction As Wall Street specialists in valuation, sell-side securities analysts constitute a particularly important class of market actor.1 Analysts produce the reports, recommendations and price targets that professional investors utilize to inform their buy and sell decisions, which means that understanding analysts’ work can provide crucial insights on the determinants of value in the capital markets. Yet our knowledge of analysts is limited by insufficient attention to Knightian uncertainty. Analysts estimate the value of stocks by calculating their net present value or by folding the future back into the present. In so doing, they are faced with the fundamental challenge identified by Frank Knight, that is, with the difficulty of making decisions that entail a future that is unknown. These decisions, as Knight wrote, are characterized by ‘neither entire ignorance nor complete . . . information, but partial knowledge’ of the world (Knight, [1921] 1971: 199). The finance literature has not examined the Knightian challenge faced by analysts. Indeed, existing treatments circumvent the problem by adopting one of two extreme positions. In the first, put forward by orthodox economists, it is assumed that Knightian uncertainty is non-existent and that calculative decision-making is straightforward. Analysts are presented as mere calculators in a probabilistic world...
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