This week students will review and revise their Week 3 Research Analysis for Business Signature Assignment based on economic analysis and the feedback provided by their facilitator. Students will also expand their Week 3 analyses to evaluate the challenges of expanding their chosen company’s production to a foreign market.

About Your Signature Assignment

This signature assignment is designed to align with specific program student learning outcome(s) in your program. Program Student Learning Outcomes are broad statements that describe what students should know and be able to do upon completion of their degree. The signature assignments might be graded with an automated rubric that allows the University to collect data that can be aggregated across a location or college/school and used for program improvements.

Assignment Steps

Resources: Tutorial help on Excel^® and Word functions can be found on the Microsoft^® Office website. There are also additional tutorials via the web offering support for Office products.

Revise your Week 3 assignment, Research Analysis for Business, using the feedback provided by your facilitator. This Week 6 report should only include one conclusion, so you will need to rewrite the conclusion you included in your Week 3 assignment, Research Analysis for Business.

Select a foreign market in which to expand your chosen product. If you wish, you may use one of the countries your team analyzed in their Week 5 Comparative and Absolute Advantage Assignment.

Prepare a minimum1,750-word report addressing the points listed below. The use of tables and/or charts to display economic data over the time period discussed is highly encouraged, you may submit any economic data in Microsoft^® Excel^®format in a separate file. You may use the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. Dept. of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Federal Reserve of St. Louis’s FRED data, the CIA World Fact Book, World Bank data, and World Trade Organization, or other appropriate sources you might find on the Internet or in the University Library. The new sections of your report should:

• Evaluate current global economic conditions and their effects on macroeconomic indicators in your selected country. Provide forecasts for population growth, gross domestic product (GDP) growth, GDP per capita growth, export growth, and sales growth.
• Evaluate any competitors’ existing production in the chosen country.
• Assess sales forecasts in the selected country by using the Federal Reserve of St. Louis’s FRED data, the CIA World Fact Book, World Bank data, World Trade Organization, or other appropriate sources you might find on the Internet or in the University Library.
• Categorize the type of economy that exists in your selected country as closed, mixed, or market. What is the difference between these types of economies and how might this affect your expansion?
• Assess how your chosen country’s current credit market conditions, especially interest rates and the availability of financing, affect demand for your product or service and your planning or operating decision for your production in that country.
• Analyze the role of the selected country’s central bank on that country’s economy.
• Compare the availability, education, and job skills of the work force in the selected country. Discuss any additional challenges of international production, such as political stability, availability of government financing or other incentives, threat of capital controls, and exchange rate risks.
• Explain any additional supply chain challenges you anticipate if attempting to make your product in your chosen country and selling the product in other countries.
• Based on the data gathered and analysis performed for this report write a conclusion in which you:
  • Create business strategies, including price and non-price strategies, based on your market structure to ensure the market share and potential market expansions and explore global opportunities for your business in a dynamic business environment and provide recommendations.
  • Develop a recommendation for how the firm can manage its future production by synthesizing the macroeconomic and microeconomic data presented.
  • Propose how the firm’s position within the market and among its competitors will allow it to take your recommended action.
  • Recommend strategies for the firm to sustain its success going forward by evaluating the findings from demand trends, price elasticity, current stage of the business cycle, and government.
  • Recommend any comparative advantages your company will have over competitors currently operating in that country, and defend your position, either for or against, expanding your company’s production into your chosen country based on your research.

Integrate with the Week 3 Individual Assignment, and incorporate corrections and suggestions from the instructor’s feedback. The final report should be a minimum of 2,800 words.

Cite a minimum of three peer reviewed sources not including the textbook.

Include all peer-reviewed references and government economic data sources/references from Week 3.

Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines.

LITERATURE DISCUSSION

• Answer to the PROMPT DISCUSSION with a Minimun of 250 WORDS and then, answer according to the opinion to the 3 students discussion included..Correctly and with minimum of 150 words each
• READ and ANSWER THE ATTACHED INCLUDED

PROMPT

The Romantic poets rebelled against the rationalism of their time by espousing imagination over logic and reason. How do the poems in this unit extol the power and virtue of the human imagination? Do you think imagination is as powerful and important to human progress as these poets believe? Do we see examples of the power of imagination today? Choose four poems and explain how each poem treats the power and virtue of the human imagination. Then discuss your views on the role of imagination today.

“My Pretty Rose Tree” written by William Blake

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

Kubla Khan, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by John Keats.

Leader in Action

IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty, Expresses Anger at Total Workforce

Virginia (“Ginni”) Rometty became the CEO of IBM Corporation after a 31-year distinguished career at the company that included key marketing positions. Although IBM remained an internationally respected business enterprise with annual sales of about $115 billion, the company was not performing as well as Rometty and Wall Street analysts had expected. When assigned the CEO position, Rometty was supposed to get IBM back on a smoother path of progress. Apparently fed up with the company’s lack of substantial progress, in April 2012, Rometty expressed anger toward employees in a five-minute video. All 434,000 employees were told by their leader to step up by working faster and more effectively. She wanted them to more proactively and productively engage customers, and stop letting big deals slip away to the competition. Rometty then focused some of the blame toward the sales staff, particularly for poor sales in the quarter preceding the video release. She said that sales representatives had failed to close on a number of software and hardware deals. Rometty expressed particular disappointment at a failed attempted software sale to a major retailer. She said, “We were too slow to understand the value and then engage on the approval and the sign-off process.” The result was that the sales staff did not get the job done. Six months later, Rometty decided to criticize the workforce again, this time in an e-mail. “Ours is a pay for performance culture and we must all be committed to take action to address our performance gaps,” she said. Rometty also noted that sales of hardware continued to perform poorly, particularly in growth market countries. Both in the video and the e-mail, Rometty did express optimism about the company’s ability to overcome its lackluster sales performance. She concluded that “Our fundamentals are strong and our future is in our own hands. I know we will confront this honestly and with urgency.” She added that in moments like this IBMers rise to the occasion, and go on the offense rather than retreating.

1. What are your impressions of this message to the workforce? Is the message motivating or will it damage motivation? Is there anything that you would have changed in the message? If so, what and why?
2. What tips can you take from the case study and the Reading to improve your conflict management communication skills?
3. How does this case study add to or change your thoughts on leadership?
4. What ideas from the case study will you add to your leadership profile?

Textbook ref: Dubrin, A. J. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice and skills. (8^th ed.). Boston:

Cengage Learning.

A final paper (3-5 pages for undergraduate students; 7-10 for graduate students) is due at the last class session. Paper topic must relate to the course but is otherwise open; it may concern a single writer, a selection of writers, or a general writing topic that came out of course discussions (and references the semester’s readings). Not infrequently students find their own creative work affected by the writers they come into contact with in this course. Creative responses are permissible but must include a prose analysis of the relationship between your own new work and the aspect of your course experience that inspired the work. Students wishing to do a creative final project should touch base with Prof. Gelineau (in person or by e-mail) before proceeding.

Final papers must be typed. Should average 250 words per page (the average for double-spaced, normal margins, 12pt Times New Roman, no double spacing between paragraphs).