2-3 Pages (Not including title & reference page) – APA format

3 references w/in text citations.

My country of choice: China (global expansion from the US to China)

My tools selected: SWOT & Porters Five Forces

You enter your project team meeting with Mike and Tiffany to hear them discussing the tools that they found to conduct an analysis of the industry and competitors. “Mike, there are so many more tools than I even realized to give us some good data,” Tiffany states.

“I know,” Mike says. “That’s why I wanted to take some time to look at our options and figure out what information we really need to support the board’s decision.”

Mike and Tiffany both found some great tools from their research on the subject. Complete the following:

• Based on your classmates’ discussion posts for Week 2, do you still believe the tools that you selected will work best for a global strategy? Why or why not?
• What evidence do you have to support your decision?
• How would you refute the people who chose an additional tool rather than one of the tools that you selected?
• Based on the tools that you selected, provide a brief analysis of your market, using those tools.

Attached is the course scenario & 3 other students posts/selection of tools.

My market is China and tools are SWOT & Porters 5 forces.

Hello,

I need three responses of at least 200 words each for the below students discussions for this week. Also in the bold below are the questions the students at answering.

Position1: Financial analysis leads to better decisions VS
Position 2: The resources to do a lengthy analysis (time, talent, information) are not always available.

This is a juxtaposition discussion question. Choose a side. If you choose the green side, find material to support your response…but you also have to find a way to resolve the counter-side on RED. If you choose the red side, find sources to help support your position…but you also have to resolve the counter-side on GREEN.

Student one:

Leading business is hard work and requires monitoring the different functions. Any leader or manager in a business does not typically work alone to know the outcome of every situation. A financial analysis is definitely beneficial for a leader to know what methods are working and what areas require more work. It can be lengthy but provides the necessary information to make decisions that will have a positive impact in the future rather than continuing a method that simply does not work for the company. In a financial analysis, adequate information comes back to determine the healthiness of the business.(Leonard, 2019) Within a financial statement there are cash flow, showing the inflow and outflow of money, liabilities, showing any business loans or credit cards, and asset and inventory, showing the inventory available or lack of inventory. (Leonard, 2019) Having this type of analysis will also help investors see the financial operations of a business.

While the cost and time of a financial analysis may seem bothersome, taking the necessary steps to get one completed is pertinent to the business’s success. There are simple steps that a small business can take to start monitoring their finances. The first one is to check the revenues to help understand the margins of revenue per employee and per customer. (Periu, 2019) Next would be the profits, gross profit margin, operating profit, and net profit margin all contribute to how the company can serve with the product and make money with the quality product.(Periu, 2019) Third would be the operational efficiency, which helps a business to manage the resources for the most profit.(Periu, 2019) This would include managing customer credit and inventory appropriately. Fourth thing to look at is the capital efficiency, showing the investors return and debt to investors.(Periu, 2019) As I mentioned earlier, investors want to see the financial analysis up front to ensure there is proper management in the operations and money of the business to lessen their risk. Finally, looking at the liquidity of a company can help determine the capabilities in creating enough profit for expenses along with growth.(Periu, 2019) This is important because not accounting for the necessary expenses can cause a business to run short on money faster in the long run. Taking small steps to manage the finances of a business is absolutely important to understand how stable the company is and will only help the growth of the company long term. It allows room to fix things before they lead to bankruptcy and provides information to compare the business against its competitors.

Resources:

Leonard, K. (2019, February 6). Advantages of a Financial Statement Analysis. In Chron. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-financial-statement-analysis-4124.html

Periu, M. (2019, June 25). 5 Key Elements of a Financial Analysis. In American Express. Retrieved from https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/tre…

Student two:

Business decisions should be made based on the outcome that provides the greatest value to the company. However, no decision is made without assuming a level or risk. To reduce the level of risk, additional information and a financial analysis of the possible options is used (Cruz, n.d.). This financial analysis requires resources, such as time, talent and data collection that is not always available at the time the decision is required to be made. This juxtaposition between the need to do a thorough financial analysis and the availability of the resources required to complete the analysis pivots on the criticality of the decision (Messenger & Shaw, 1993). When a decision has a higher criticality, there is often less time to complete the analysis required to complete a full financial analysis. Regardless of the level of analysis completed by a company before a decision is made, most require some level of future looking assumptions and forecasting that will present a level of risk. With additional information and further analysis, it can be assumed that the assumptions will be more accurate, leading to better decision making.

If a critical decision is required on a timeline that does not permit the full analysis, or if the resources are limited for other factors, the decision should be weighed with the level of risk that is assumed. This risk assessment may require the addition of a cost contingency to the budget or using a more conservative sales forecast showing less favorable returns. In many cases, due to the combination of the value of the decision, combined with a high level of risk, senior management participation and approval of the decision may be required based on the company’s capital governance policy. Whenever possible, a company should complete a thorough analysis to ensure they make decisions that will provide the most value. When decisions must be made with limited time or inadequate resources, the level of risk assumed with each option must be applied to the decision and appropriate assumptions made to quantify that risk.

References:

Cornett, Adair, & Nofsinger (2015). Finance Applications & Theory 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin Melicher, R. W. & Norton, E. A. (2013). Introduction to Finance: Markets, Investments, and Financial Management, 15th edition.

Cruz, A. (n.d.). Financial Analysis and Valuation for Strategic Decision Making. Retrieved from https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/execed/program-pages/details/1028/FAV

Messenger, S., & Shaw, H. (1993). Cost Analysis and Decision Making. Financial Management, 132-141. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-13080-1_13

Katarina Zager and Lajos Zager (2006). The Role of Financial Information in Decision Making Process. Innovative Marketing , 2(3)

Student three:

Financial analysis can lead to better decisions for firms. Financial analyses are versatile in that they can be applied to a large variety of potential situations and types of decisions. Financial analyses can highlight trends and patterns in cash flows, expenses, etc. These trends and patterns over time are documented and used to forecast future business (Meyer, 2018). Types of financial analysis including balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements display the information necessary to make business decisions. These types of analysis may educate business owners on how much money a company can borrow from external sources, the ability of a business to repay debts and creditors, and how much cash flow the business is generating. Financial analysis can allow companies to not only set goals, but to identify what stage they are at in accomplishing the set goals.

However, firms that may be suffering financial distress, are experiencing periods of low cash flow, or are small, newly-established small businesses may not have the resources to properly analyze their finances. Larger, more established firms would have substantial amounts of historical data to use in their analyses, in addition to a larger number of employees dedicated to financial matters. Larger firms would also provide more experienced employees that would be more educated in identifying and interpreting various financial patterns. It is also possible that regardless of what resources are available to a firm that the financial analysis doesn’t hold true. There has also been multiple occurrences of foul play including manipulating financial data. One large example was Enron, which lead to several laws and regulations being passed to hopefully prevent recurrence (Sherman & Young, 2016).

Meyer, A. (2018, November 30). Financial Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/financial-analysis.html.

Sherman, H. D., & Young, D. (2016, June 20). Where Financial Reporting Still Falls Short. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/07/where-financial-reporting-still-falls-short.

Part I: Q&A Discussion Forum: You will be asked to come up with two original questions based on the work of two different authors in each week’s required readings. Think about what stood out to you in the works in question—what ideas, theories, or approaches did you find to be interesting, engaging, or perhaps intriguing or challenging? (See each Discussion Forum for the specific authors or works you may select from in forming your questions.) Your task is then to do your best to answer each of your own questions as incisively and thoroughly as possible within a word-count range of around 350-500 words maximum (posts with fewer than 250 words will not receive any credit). The word count includes your question but not any citations. You must cite at least one source, which will be the particular essay or article from the required readings you are addressing. You are welcome to bring in as many others sources as you may need, but this is optional. Just be sure to cite any source from which you take ideas, arguments, or passages of language within the body of your response (next to the quoted or paraphrased passages), including the full source information at the end of your response (you need not do a separate works cited or reference page for this assignment). Your score for this part of the assignment will be based on the relevance, sophistication, and originality of your questions as well as the insight, understanding, and incisiveness expressed in your answers. This assignment will be due at the end of day on each Friday of the course. In these essay-style responses to your own questions, you should express a point of view and support your view with good reasons, evidence, examples, expert opinion, etc. High marks will not be achieved by simply reporting back information from the text or other sources. Philosophical thinking and writing involves more than presenting information; beyond doing this, you must also critically assess the issue in question—this involves original thinking and analysis. Moreover, you should attempt to come to some final position in response to the question and include evaluation of others’ positions or views on the issues involved in the question. Work for originality and development of critical analyses and evaluations. Critical Comment Forum: The second part of the Discussion Board Forum requires going back to your peers’ Q&A Discussion posts (Part I). Select one Q&A from the work of two different class peers and write a 200-400 word critical commentary on each one (do not critique your own Q&A posts). If two other students have already posted critiques of a particular Q&A discussion post, you must move on to one that has not been critiqued or has only one other critical comment posted. So, ideally, each Q&A discussion will have two critical comments. It may happen that two students post a second critique to the same Q&A at the same time, resulting in three critical comments, with the later ones being simultaneously posted. This is not really a problem and nothing to worry about. The main idea here is to expand the interactivity and general scope of the discussion. Your critiques are due by end of day each Sunday for the first three weeks of class; since class ends on a Saturday, your Week Four critical comments will be due on the final Saturday of class. It is important to note that a critique or critical commentary may be positive, negative, or a mixture of the two. We tend to use the word, “criticize,” or the expression, “being critical” with a mostly negative connotation, as in finding fault with something or “putting something (or someone) down.” That is not the intention here, although part of what you’re doing in writing a critique may indeed be finding fault. But the faults you are pointing out will have nothing to do with the author himself or herself. You will be looking for errors in reasoning and argumentation, in reporting of relevant facts or information, in overlooking or misconstruing important points relevant to the question posed, and so on. You should also be looking for precision and clarity in thought and written expression and overall comprehensibility of the written response. Essentially, you will be analyzing and evaluating two peer Q&A Discussion posts and weighing in on what you think they did well and where they fell short, in terms of both posing an interesting, insightful, or useful question and providing a thoughtprovoking or at least satisfactory answer to that question. You may also want to offer a different answer to the question posed, or add points to the answer you are critiquing. You need not cite any sources in your critiques, but of course you are free to do so. Don’t forget to review the document, “Writing a Critique of Another Person’s Argument, which you will find a link to in the Discussion Board instructions for each week. Formatting Your Posts: Click on the title link in each Discussion Forum to create your Q&A threads. YOU SHOULD CREATE A NEW THREAD FOR EACH ONE OF YOUR TWO QUESTIONS. You will then return later in the week to post your critical comments INSIDE of the two Q&A threads of your choice (remember that if a Q&A thread already has two comment replies, you need to move on to another Q&A thread that has no more than one reply). This means you will be creating two original threads and responding to two threads (each by a different peer) each week to complete both parts of the assignment–the Q&A Discussion and the Critical Comments. 1) Part I: Each one of your two Q&A Discussion threads should be formatted as follows (remember…these are two separate threads): First thread: My first question is: My answer to this question is: Second thread: My second question is: My answer to this question is:

Part 2:

After completing this week’s assigned chapters of Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy as well as the other required readings for this week, first, summarize what you learned from reading Russell this week. Then, your main goal in this assignment beyond the summary is to tie together any theories, themes, concepts, important ideas, arguments, important observations, etc. you discover in Russell’s work and the particular philosophical views and the general content covered in the other readings. For example, in Week Three, you will be summarizing Chapters IX-XII in The Problems of Philosophy, and then you will look for how what he says there links up with, adds to, or even conflicts with the philosophical views and ideas of Aristotle, Kant (again), Mill, and Sartre. This week may be more challenging because Russell’s concerns reside mainly in epistemology and metaphysics and these authors discuss foundations of morality, so you may have to dig a little deeper into their thinking for this one. Please take a moment to review the complete. before completing this assignment.

This brief, informal essay should be in the 400-500-word range. You may submit your “Russell Round Up” as a file attachment or simply write it directly into the text editor (but best practice is always to save your work in a file so you don’t risk losing it if your computer shuts down). Please pay careful attention to grammar, spelling, word use, and writing style; this means you need to proofread your work before submitting it. This assignment is worth 5 points (weighted at 5%). It is due at the end of day on each Saturday of the course.

Required Reading:

Here are the required reading assignments to be completed this week:

• Russell, The Problems of Philosophy : Chapters IX-XII [ Russell, Bertrand.The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 48-67]. The entire work can be found online here: Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy.
  • Study Guide: SparkNotes on Russell’s Problems of Philosophy: Chapter IX ; Chapter X ; Chapter XI ; Chapter XII .

• Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics , Book I, Chapters 5-7, pp.15-21; Book II, Chapters 1-8, pp. 34-49.
  • Study Guide: ” Aristotle on Happiness “, retrieved from http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-hap…

• Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals , Chapter 2, pp. 14-41.
  • Study Guide:” A Priori Truths “: You may find the information here helpful in arriving at a deeper understanding of Kant’s ideas.

• Mill, Utilitarianism , Chapter 2, pp. 4-18.

• Sartre,“ Existentialism Is a Humanism ” (entire), pp. 1-18.
  • Study Guide: Summary of Sartre’s Terminology
  • For more about Sartre’s concept of “bad faith,” read this chapter from Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, Ed. Stephen Priest: Sartre on Bad Faith

For general research on any philosophical topic, theme, or major philosopher, here are two excellent online sources:

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Discrimination is an issue impacting today’s workforce. Discrimination can occur due to race, gender, sex, religion, and so forth. For this assignment, you will discuss two anti-discrimination laws. Organize your paper in this manner:

• Section 1: Introduction. In this section, you will discuss the current landscape of workplace discrimination. Specifically, identify recent statistics about discrimination in the workplace.
• Section 2: Anti-Discrimination Employment Law 1. Describe the first anti-discrimination law (e.g., history, strengths and weaknesses of the law, and application of the law in today’s workforce).
• Section 3: Anti-Discrimination Employment Law 2. Describe the second anti-discrimination law (e.g., history, strengths and weaknesses of the law, and application of the law in today’s workforce).
• Section 4: HR’s Role in Enforcing Laws. Evaluate the role of the HR Department in regard to enforcing the discrimination laws you selected.
• Section 5: Conclusion

Additional requirements:

• Write a 3-5-page paper, or about 1100 words, not including the title and reference pages, which are required.
• Your paper must be properly cited and formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA (Links to an external site.).
• Include a formal reference page. This is an individual paper; however, you should reflect on our discussion forums and incorporate ideas from there, as appropriate.
• You must support your analysis with at least three scholarly references and can include resources from this course.
• The CSU-Global Library (Links to an external site.) is a good place to find these sources. You cannot use Wikipedia or any CSU-Global assignment. For this assignment, a credible source is defined as:
  • A scholarly or peer-reviewed journal article.
  • A government-based website or publication.
  • A trade or industry journal article, publication, or website, including those from trade organizations such as SHRM.org and TD.org.

The CIO of the Mamma Mia organization (a dry pasta manufacturer and distributor) has decreed that SCRUM will be used to manage all software development projects from now on. For an important meeting that the CIO has with the fellow C’s next week, the CIO has asked you, as Systems Development Manager, to prepare a comprehensive report describing SCRUM, with wording and content aimed at the top managers of the organization.

The paper should have at least 900 words and have the following section subtitles (plus proper introduction and conclusion paragraphs):

• Summary of the proposal
• Description of SCRUM
• SCRUM Roles
• The SCRUM Team
• SCRUM procedures
• Why SCRUM now?

Include a title page and reference page. Make sure your paper follows APA style according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA (Links to an external site.).

As support for your analysis, use at least two resources and/or outside, credible academic sources. (You may not use Wikipedia for any CSU-Global assignment.) For this assignment, a credible source is defined as:

• Scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles
• Newspaper articles
• Trade or industry journal articles, publications, or websites, including those from trade organizations. Consider CIO Magazine, the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and similar solid sources.

Please be sure NOT to use direct quotations from sources and, instead, use paraphrasing or summarizing when needed.