Learning Outcomes

a) Select and evaluate the usefulness of a range of decision making tools and reflect on your decision-making styles and contrast with other styles to determine the respective levels of rationality and intuition utilised

b) Compare, contrast and critically evaluate sources of data as influences for decision-making in a range of business contexts

c) Examine and evaluate decision making systems and techniques to engage group decisions and analyse how these can enhance sustainable outcomes

d) Critically examine emerging tools and technologies for decision making

Context:

Working environments are constantly changing, with contemporary organisations readily adopting new and innovative ways to bring groups of people together. One of the ways organisations have overcome globalisation demands is through the formation of virtual teams. Virtual teams/groups are where individuals, rather than working face-to-face, operate in networked environments supported in their communication and physical presence through technology and virtual group membership.

Here, skilled empowered individuals are required to operate outside their traditional organisational workplaces, instead working across the city or across the world, joined together by systems of technology, but working in physical isolation from one another.

This growth in virtual groups has come at a time of rapid and multidimensional change where established, traditional approaches to communication have been force fitted over newly emerging workgroup structures. Managers will clearly need to take on and make good use of available and emerging technologies to enhance their own their group's functioning and their organisation's decision making and change management skills.

Understanding the use of technology, the psychosocial costs and communication challenges in this technology-based environment will become essential ingredients for effective virtual managers and is the focus of Assessment 3. Organisations, keen to harness information-based resources held in the form of data in staff members' heads and evident in unstructured form in their emails, texts and conversations will need to use appropriate technology and group process in collaboration between staff to capture the resources. Information -based resources in tacit or unstructured data form can be mined and translated into explicit form to identify key organisational assets. Resources once identified can be leveraged to provide the enterprise with competitive advantage.

Instructions

To successfully complete Assessment 3 students are required to;

– Read and discuss both Scenario A AND Scenario B
– Provide an individual Research Analysis covering all required fields

Scenario A

Is set in a mid-sized Australian organisation of 800 people, 80 of whom are involved in research, development and design (R, D &D) work. The organisation is keen to identify the innovative/creative capabilities held by their RD&D staff and use these capabilities to differentiate the business from their competitors. The organisation has set up a project to research R, D & D innovative/creative capabilities held tacitly by staff and in their unstructured communication.

Tacit information can be best accessed and converted to knowledge by accessing email -based communication between RD&D staff. RD&D staff members' emails and their rates and direction of connectivity have accordingly been mapped over a one-week period. The results of this research audit have been made available on the attached Map of R, D & D unstructured Information contained in emails.

Scenario A Data

The map identifies each staff member and the work station they have logged onto, by node (circle with a number inside). Rates of connectivity are shown by lines connecting the different nodes and the direction and intensity of traffic by the numbers of lines into/out of nodes.

The project will call for interpretation of the map and decisions made on who to bring together to discuss the content and collaborate in making tacit unstructured information drawn from emails explicit and therefore suitable for use by the organisation. Several ‘meeting rooms' will be made available to selected RD&D staff, each with a facilitator, visual aids and a groups decision support system to link and summarise up meeting room outputs.

This project will make use of a group-based communication technology system to support meetings between staff members and help make staff members' tacit data/information explicit. To facilitate this process resources available in each meeting room will guide group process and ensure that each meeting room's participants collaborate with one another, and with groups in other meeting rooms in generating explicit knowledge.

Task

– After considering the map constructed from 70+ company staff members' emails over a one- week period you are required to help make sense of the tacit data held in those emails
– You should start by identifying naturally occurring clusters of R, D & D staff. Number those clusters one to six and show the nodes (numbered staff and terminals) you have decided to include in each cluster
– Move to the next step of selecting two key members (use rates of inter connectivity- connecting lines) from each of the clusters to attend the meeting areas and work with facilitators and GDSS technology in generating explicit knowledge
– Identify each cluster from one to six and show each cluster's constituents. In the table below.

Discussion Questions:

– How did you decide on type and size of each of the six clusters?

– What was the basis for your selection of nodes in the clusters?

– Did you include ‘dangling nodes' in your analysis? Why or Why Not?

– Did you include unconnected nodes in your clusters? Why or Why not?

– What was your justification for selecting two R.D & D staff per each cluster to attend meeting areas over others in different clusters?

Scenario B

This case is centred around an Australia wide service-based organisation. Head office is in Melbourne, Australia and the organisation consists of 200 service staff, across 10 service centres, reporting to 40 managers. The organisation is keen to determine levels of service support provided by their staff and has instituted a project to capture what it means to be a service person and identify perceived support provided by management.

A series of telephone and face-to-face interviews have been conducted across field staff and management and the results recorded. The words recorded in individuals' stories captured through interviews have been processed by Leximancer, a qualitative analysis tool capable of making sense of vast amounts of data.

Assessment 3 Scenario B Data

The Leximancer process of analysis can define meaning through deep analysis of large amounts of textual data.

Task

– Take note of the relative size of the balloons (concepts) and the lines connecting, or not collecting, the concepts.
– Consider the Leximancer content analysis map showing the concepts surrounding field staff, managers and customers and the communication, or lack of it between these concepts.
– Consider the map carefully, identifying key concepts and their relative relationships, then describe the more important and less important relationships shown.

Discussion Questions:

– What form does the field service staff members' communication take?
– Who are they most likely communicating with, and about what?
– Is there a high level of communication between managers and customers?
– How important has support availability been?
– How open is communication between field staff and management?
– Describe the nature of results communicated by field staff
– What part do managers play in communicating results?
Use the results of your analysis to inform your decisions on the following.
– Are managers sufficiently customer facing to justify an introduction of an incentive payment system for them. Why or Why Not?
– Should the organisation bolster management's role or rather establish empowered self- managed field service teams to better reach customers?

– Has support proved to be effective enough to justify support increases
– Should customer-service communication be changed towards one of greater openness. Why or Why Not?

Suggested format

A possible structure for your Research Analysis is shown below.

– Cover page
– Executive summary
– Introduction
– Body
o Discussion of Scenario A
o Discussion of Scenario B
– Recommendations
– Conclusion
– Appendices

You may make any necessary assumptions; however, any significant assumptions should be detailed in your Research Analysis.

Management and Business Context – Business Analysis Essay

Objective – A business organisation is an individual or group of  people that collaborate to achieve certain commercial goals. Some  business organisations are formed to earn income for owners. Other  business organisations, called nonpro?ts, are formed for public  purposes. This is an individual assessment task in which you will  examine critical issues related to business and management contexts. The  objective is to gain greater understanding of the contextual factors  internal and external to a business that impact on a business  organisation and its decision making.

Task –

This assignment is a precursor to Assessment Item 2. In Assessment  Item 2 you will choose an organisation and a contextual factor from  those provided in a list; you must explore the assigned contextual  factor in relation to the specific organisation. PLEASE NOTE you do not  choose your own organisation; you MUST choose from the list provided.  Prior to discussing the speci?c contextual factor of interest in  Assessment Item 2, Assessment Item 1 requires you to discuss the  assigned business organisation in relation to the following five topics.

Topic – “Victorian Taxi and Innovation”

1. Describe the organisational structure of the business.

Make sure 2nd and 3rd questions contain SWOT for internal and for external analysis

2. Discuss the external and internal environmental forces that impact the business.

3. Analyse the risks that currently confront the business organisation.

4. Describe the business practices decisions that the business should  make to enhance organisational performance. (Write Recommendation).

5. Discuss the most important functions within the business organisation that will assist it to achieve its strategy.

The format of the assessment is an essay of 1500 words.

Essay structure –

Title page

Introduction

Background

Aims/ objectives

Scope

Discussion

Contextual factor/s and their impact

Conclusion

Reference list

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar

Fundamentals of Management Assignment –

Topic: Contemporary Organisational Structure/Designs and Effectiveness

The table attached shows a list of 4 contemporary organisational designs that are being used by various global organisation to compete in a fast-pace changing digital economy.

Your task is to choose one of the structure above and refer it to a well-known MNC (preferably an Australian one) that is using the said structure in their organisation.

Provide an organisational chart of the company you have chosen detailing where the above design is used within the organization. You must provide an analysis into why this particular structure is important to the company growth, how effective and which parts of the organisation is the company utilising this structure to compete in the global environment. In your analysis you should also provide insight into any disadvantages that the structure might cause to the company's ability to compete in their particular industry/business. Provide suggestions on changes that might be implemented to overcome such disadvantages.

In your discussion, you need to ensure that:

a) Use specific and real-life examples related to the company you are analysing

b) Make at least 5 literature reference related to the company you have chosen

c) Your essay should be 2000 words.

You have different perceptions – researching an assigned HRM function and seeing how this might be performed in two different countries. Emphasis should be given to comparing and contrasting the cultural differences between these two countries and determining if this is a factor in explaining differences in practice between the two countries.

This assignment will require research and presentation skills and good communication between each student in the team. Non-cooperation is not an acceptable response as you will depend on ach others efforts.

The HRM functions that could be assigned are;

– Recruiting and selecting staff
– Performance management – pay and rewards
– Training
– Occupational health and safety standards
– Industrial Relations – the role of trade unions
– Work-life balance issues

SECTION A: DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1- Give two examples related to your discipline that you may face imbalance data in classification techniques. How you approach to handle imbalance data? You need to provide detail explanations

2- Explain why you can or why you cannot use R2 or adjusted R2 to evaluate a logistic regression?

3- Give twopractical examples on applications oflogistic regression in your discipline. Provide detail explanations. You need to explain why you think logistic regression can be used in those cases, you do not needto provide data or actually solve them.

4- Assume one of the explanatory variable (named X1) in your logistic regression is a categorical variable with the following levels: low, average, high, very high and another explanatory variable (named X2) is also categorical with the following levels: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Explain how you will use them in developing your logistic regression model. How many coefficients you will have in your final model?

SECTION B:  QUANTITATIVE QUESTIONS

5- There are 500 client records in the first worksheet of theExcel file (provided for this assessment)whohave shopped many special productsfrom an e-Business website. Each record includes data on types of product purchased (between 1-5), purchase amount ($), age, gender, marital status of the customer, whether the client has a membership and whether the customer has a discount card.

a)         Explain the steps on how to develop a KNN model to predict which customerswill spend more than $700. (Write your answer as: Step 1-… Step 2- … and so on. You don't need to run XLMiner and report the results.)

b)         Do you think the accuracy of the model will improve if we predict which customers will spend more than $500 rather than $700? Explain the reasons. You don't need to run XLMiner and report the results.

c)         Develop a predictive model to predict the spend amount of a new female customer with age of 27 who is married and is not a member and hold a discount card type 3.

6- A company provides maintenance service for washing machines in Victoria.The collected data are presented in the Excel file (second worksheet).

a)         Assume the manager asked you to analyse the data and provide him some insights and recommendations. The report should not exceed 2 pages.

b)         The managers believe the quality of the parts that are supplied from a supplier is declining over the past few months and that is causing more frequent required service. Perform a predictive analysis to investigate if there is a such relationship.

c)         What other data you recommend to the manger to be added into this dataset in future for better analysis and what kind of analysis you think will be useful based on them.

7- In worksheet 3, a dataset from blood bank is presented. The data are recorded for apheresis blood donation made by a group of donors of a period of time. The donor ID is unique for each donor. A donor might have donated more than once in this period. At each donation, the blood total protein level of the donor has been recorded. Use the dataset to answer the following questions:

a)         There are some missing values for blood type. Think how you can fill in the missing values. Explain your approach (step by step) and also apply your approach and try to fill the missing value as much as possible in. (save the results in an Excel worksheet in and name it Question 3 Part a.)

b)         Calculate the average of total protein for each donor. Explain your approach (step by step). Report them in a worksheet and name it

Question 3 Part b.
c)         Calculate the range of total protein for each donor. Explain your approach (steps by step). Report them in a worksheet and name it

Question 3 Part c.
d)         Is total protein declining by age?
e)         Present two best visualisation tool for this data that you think provide useful information?

8- The data presented in worksheet 4 is the results of a 4-year study conducted to assess how age, weight, and gender influence the risk of diabetes. Risk is interpreted as the probability (times 100) that the patient will have diabetes over the next 4-year period.

a)         What predictive model you suggest to relate risk of diabetes to the person's age, weight and the gender. Why?

b)         Develop a multiple linear regression model that relates risk of diabetes to the person's age, weight and the gender. Present the regression formula as a mathematical equation. Interpret the significance and coefficients of the regression and comment on the strength of the regression.

c)         Develop an estimated multiple regression model that relates risk of diabetes to the person's age, weight, gender and life style. Present the regression formula as a mathematical equation. Interpret the coefficients of the regression and comment on the strength of the regression.

d)         What is the risk percentage of diabetes over the next 4 years for a 59-year-old man living in a smalltown with 72 kg weight? Use both models in parts b and c to estimate the risk and compare and comment on the result.

9- Matthewhas a new job as business analyst.He plans to invest 12 percent of his annual salary after the tax into a retirement account at the end of every year for the next 30 years. Suppose that annual return is 5%, and his current after tax salary is 76k which grow 3% per year then:

a)         Create a spreadsheet which showsMatthewthe balance of retirement account for various levels of annual investments and returns.

b)         If Matthewaims to gain $1,500,000 at the end of the 30th year, what percentage of his salary he should put in the investment annually.

10- FSUB is a companythat intended to introduce its products by advertising them in 3 relevant websites. The names of these websites are noted as A, B and C by the marketing manager of the company. Viewer estimates, cost per advertisement, and maximum usage for each website are as shown:

Limitations

Website A

Website B

Website C

Estimated number of   viewers per each advertisement

130,000

35,000

80,000

Cost per   advertisement for the first 5 advertisements

$2,500

$500

$800

Cost per   advertisement for more than 5 advertisements

$2,200

Maximum acceptable   number of advertisements

15

20

35

To ensure a balanced use of advertising, website B advertisements must not exceed 70% of the total number of advertisements authorized. In addition, website A should account for at least 20% of the total number of advertisements authorized.If the budget is limited to $68,000. Note that Website A offers a discount based on the number of orders and Websites B and C do not offer any discount. (Note that for example, if you decide to order 7 advertisements to Website A, the cost to be paid to Website A would be 5*2500+2*2200=16900)

a)         How many advertisements should be ordered on each website to maximize total viewers? Write down the models in your report with clear definition of the objective function, constraints and decision variables. Build the models in Excel and save theworksheet (name it Question 6 part a) in the Excel file that you submitting as a part of your exam.

b)         Rewrite the model and answer this question: how much Website A must charge per advertisement such that exactly 11advertisements be allocated to website A if the company aim to maximize the total number of viewers? (Assume the cost per advertisement of website B and website C remain the same as presented in the above table).