Earlier this semester, we briefly discussed the idea of a stereotype. If you are still unfamiliar with this concept, a stereotype is a common belief (usually negative) that is held about a group of people. For example, Asians are often seen as good at math. African-Americans are often thought to be very good at sports. People from poor areas are dumb. People with British accents are believed to be intelligent. Of course, such general assumptions about people have no real basis. We may know many Asians who are very bad at math. And so, such stereotypes often lead (to some) to negative consequences.

Remember that in “Brainology” written by Carol S. Dweck, Dweck states that stereotypes are practically a fixed mindset (4), which in turn, leads a person to avoid trying to improve in things such as academia because they believe that they will inevitably fail because of who they were born to be (1). Even if a stereotype is positive, there can be negative consequences. For example, earlier, I mentioned the stereotype that Asians are good at math. If an Asian student is, in fact, not good at math, they may feel incredible stress when confronted with the subject and may take measures to either avoid of hide his/her ignorance. For example, they may cheat.

And this can be true for many of us in this class. We might hold a certain mindset about who were are and what we’re able to do. So for this discussion, I’d like you answer several of these questions relating to stereotypes.

1. What are a few stereotypes about the group you belong to?(I m Chinese my friend from Iran) You might fit into several groups. You might be part of a minority group, be a certain gender or come from a specific region of the world. You can talk about several stereotypes of all of these categories you identify with.
2. How have these stereotypes affected you in small and big ways? Some of us may be angry about them. Some of us may feel more pressure to succeed. Others may even feel strange that they don’t fit these stereotypes. Describe your feelings on the matter and how these stereotypes may have affected your life.
3. Think of a few stereotypes that you know of of the following groups: Hispanics. African Americans. People from poor areas. Women. You will notice that I have chosen to discuss specifically minority groups. It’s important to think about these groups, as people often hold negative assumptions about them that may systematically negatively affect their lives. Tell me about of a few of the stereotypes hold about them.
4. How do you think these negative stereotypes impact their lives in the long run? For example, some people think women are naturally inferior to men because of biological reasons. I think many of us can agree that there are individuals out there (perhaps too many) who hold this perspective, especially those from older generations. How has a sexist sort of mentality harm women on a social and personal level?

 This assignment will
consist of a single class, with all code in the main() method. Call your
class SentenceCipher (that
is, the source code will be in a file called SentenceCipher.java). If you
choose to use an IDE other than DrJava, ensure that your program is not defined
in a package (there should be no package statement at the top of the file).

When your assignment is complete, a user running your program will
be prompted to enter the shared ‘source’ text, then asked if they want to
encrypt or decrypt a message. The source text may contain any mixture of
characters, including punctuation and spaces. Before continuing, the source
text must be converted to all lower case.

After receiving the source text from the user, they will be asked
to choose one of two options:

1. Encrypt a
   message

• The user is
  prompted to enter a word to be encrypted (this word is converted to lower
  case).
• The program
  finds the position in the source text of the first occurrence of each
  character from the word (or -1 if the character cannot be found) and
  creates a new String containing those positions, separated by spaces and
  ending with -2.
• The program
  displays the list of positions, preceded by the text “Result: ”.

1. 
On a separate line, the
program outputs the amount of information loss, which is charactersnotfoundwordlength×100

• This should be
  preceded by “Information loss (%): ”.

• The user is
  prompted to enter a list of positions, separated by spaces and ending
  with -2 (to indicate the end of the word).
• As long as the
  next position is not -2, the program reconstructs the word one character
  at a time:
• if the
  position is within the bounds of the source text then the character at
  that position is added to the word;
• if the
  position is -1 then an underscore (_) is appended to the string,
  indicating an unrecoverable character; and
• if the
  position is less than -1 or beyond the end of the source text then an
  exclamation mark (!) is appended to the word.
• If there were
  any invalid positions (less than -1 or beyond the end of the source text)
  then the program should print a message indicating how many. The number
  should be followed by the text ” invalid position(s)“. The message
  should not be displayed at all if there were no invalid positions.
• The program
  outputs the recovered message, preceded by the text “Result: ”
• On a separate
  line, the program outputs the amount of information loss, which is charactersnotfoundwordlength×100, , where the number of
  characters not found includes both positions of -1 and invalid positions.
  This should be preceded by “Information loss (%): ”.

TYPE:Individual Project

UNIT: Structure, Change, and Stress

DELIVERABLE LENGTH: 1,200 words paper, APA formatted (with minimum of 3 references)

Assignment details: Cameron Mechanical & Automation, Inc. (CMA) is a fictional company that has been in business and operating in the Silicon Valley since 1998. The company began as a successful Internet-based company (dot-com) and experienced great success with the introduction of high technology. The company also experienced decline with other dot-coms in 2001. As a result, CMA restructured and focused on its primary products; that is, computer components. The early changes in the company were done quickly to downsize. Although many other companies failed during this time, CMA managed to move forward.

CMA rebounded and continued to manufacture and sell its components to computer manufacturers worldwide. The company structure was divided into product divisions, with each division focused on specific components. For the company, this structure was meant to streamline sales and delivery worldwide.

In 2008, the economy had an effect on company profits, but the chief executive officer (CEO), Jared Smith, was in a position to focus on several internal strategic areas, including structure, work design, motivation, conflict, and company culture as a whole. To stay profitable, the company had to eliminate several management positions in an effort to flatten the organizational chart. Many of the responsibilities fell to the employees, and many people resisted the change.

As the economy recovers, CMA continues to rebuild. Since 2012, the company has been divided into a functional structure that includes four departments: Research and development (R&D), marketing, production, and finance. Each department is headed by a vice president who has responsibility over each of the functional areas. The company currently sells components to computer manufacturers. As technology continues to advance, the CMA R&D department and its vice president, Kevin Adams, are feeling pressure to keep up with the competition. However, because of the differentiation and separation between the departments, the CEO is concerned that communication is hampered.

Because of the current structure and culture, the vice presidents who run each division of the company have autonomy and are able to use different leadership styles. For example, the vice president of marketing, Jim Stevens, uses a more democratic leadership style, while the vice president of production, Melissa Simons, is adamant that her autocratic or transactional style is the only way to get results. Each leadership style has advantages, but the lack of consistency between divisions may be causing problems for the company as a whole. Further, the CEO is concerned that the workforce may not be as diverse as it should be, but he is not sure how to address the issue.

It is the end of the day, and you are meeting in Jared’s office to talk about his conference with the vice presidents.

Jared, the CEO, says: “We talked about how we can change the infrastructure so that it helps organizational culture run efficiently and consistently. Everyone is getting the same message now about how structure and culture need to work in a healthy company.”
“You know, it would help if I had something that explained the link between culture and structure. I need to talk to the board about the changes we’re making, and I will be talking to staff about what they can expect to happen over the next 6 months. You’re a better writer than I am, and I could use a well-written explanation for my discussions.”
Jared also says, “Besides explaining the link between culture and structure in this assignment, and based on the problems that CMA has had, what additional changes would you suggest for the company? I want to include your recommendations in the agenda for the next quarterly meeting with the board.”
If there are any questions on any of this, reach out to your instructor and also be sure to attend or listen to the chats as that is where you will be able to ask questions and gain many insights in what is being asked for here.

Scenario / background info: Cameron Mechanical & Automation, Inc. (CMA) is a fictional company that has been in business and operating in the Silicon Valley since 1998. The company began as a successful Internet-based company (dot-com) and experienced great success with the introduction of high technology. The company also experienced decline with other dot-coms in 2001. As a result, CMA restructured and focused on its primary products; that is, computer components. The early changes in the company were done quickly to downsize. Although many other companies failed during this time, CMA managed to move forward.

CMA rebounded and continued to manufacture and sell its components to computer manufacturers worldwide. The company structure was divided into product divisions, with each division focused on specific components. For the company, this structure was meant to streamline sales and delivery worldwide.

In 2008, the economy had an effect on company profits, but the chief executive officer (CEO), Jared Smith, was in a position to focus on several internal strategic areas, including structure, work design, motivation, conflict, and company culture as a whole. To stay profitable, the company had to eliminate several management positions in an effort to flatten the organizational chart. Many of the responsibilities fell to the employees, and many people resisted the change.

As the economy recovers, CMA continues to rebuild. Since 2012, the company has been divided into a functional structure that includes four departments: Research and development (R&D), marketing, production, and finance. Each department is headed by a vice president who has responsibility over each of the functional areas. The company currently sells components to computer manufacturers. As technology continues to advance, the CMA R&D department and its vice president, Kevin Adams, are feeling pressure to keep up with the competition. However, because of the differentiation and separation between the departments, the CEO is concerned that communication is hampered.

In the last employee satisfaction survey, the CEO became aware of growing feelings of mistrust between employees and managers. Hiring practices are also under scrutiny and criticism, because allegations of nepotism have been leveled at the company. For these reasons and others, employee turnover and absenteeism is on the rise in all four divisions. Staffing problems have made it difficult to meet customer expectations as the demand for company products grows.

Because of the current structure and culture, the vice presidents who run each division of the company have autonomy and are able to use different leadership styles. For example, the vice president of marketing, Jim Stevens, uses a more democratic leadership style, while the vice president of production, Melissa Simons, is adamant that her autocratic or transactional style is the only way to get results. Each leadership style has advantages, but the lack of consistency between divisions may be causing problems for the company as a whole. Further, the CEO is concerned that the workforce may not be as diverse as it should be, but he is not sure how to address the issue.

The CEO has hired you as an external organizational development consultant to help him identify problem areas and to understand where changes should be made within the company. Over the next few weeks, you will also be working with the CEO and managers in all four divisions of the company to help establish these changes. Your various responsibilities will also include talking with employees at each level of the company to get a better understanding about underlying problems.

So far, you are seeing inconsistencies in leadership practices in each of the departments, and you are concerned that while the company is trying to improve its communication protocol, the different leadership styles may be creating confusion. For example, when you talked to one of the production employees, Sonja Diaz, she explained that she had many ideas for helping to streamline the production process, but feels she cannot share them because of the transactional leadership. In the marketing department, one sales rep, Jerry McVie, felt that he was not being challenged with his current goals and is even considering leaving the company to join one of the competitors. Lack of communication between the divisional leaders might also be the cause of conflict between the departments because they operate in silos. This separation between divisions may also be having a negative effect on middle management staffing issues.