5-8 assignment

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Assignment 5

Module 5 - Understanding Changes to the Senior Management Teams

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is to help learners recognize the importance of senior management teams and as well as changes in their composition.

Instructor Comments

Many individuals equate career success with a position as an officer or executive of a large publicly traded corporation. While remuneration is often considerable, a downside of such success is that one’s life enters into the public domain. Observers, analysts and researchers of these corporations benefit from by being offered access to back ground information on these individuals. Biographies may be accessed online from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings by their employers. What is beneficial about such access is that the past behavior of executives often points to the future. We are creatures of habit. Knowing the skills and previous successes of an individual often predicts how he or she might deal with a crisis or challenge and in turn enhance outsiders understanding of these large for profit entities. Knowing backgrounds also enables observers to understand who is who on corporate teams. Who did the CEO hire? Who preceded the CEO? Answers to questions such as these suggest who is powerful and who is an insider to decision making? Knowing education backgrounds and previous employers can also suggest who will be turned to for advice in challenging moments. As noted above, SEC documents such as a 10K filing will highlight the year when an executive started with a company. Looking back at previous years documents, one can determine when executives were hired, fired or retired. When this type of information is compared with share price data available using Yahoo!Finance, one can often tie executive changes to performance declines. Applying this type of knowledge is the purpose of this assignment.

Assignment

You should base your responses to the following questions on the insight found in the 10K SEC filing of Cisco Systems and the following websites.

· U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission http://www.sec.gov.

· Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com.

· Cisco Systems http://www.cisco.com.

The 10K Form is the Annual Report filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of a company whose shares trade publicly on U.S. stock exchanges. 10K Forms identify members of executive teams, offer brief biographies and identify when these executives started in these positions. They also offer financial information about the company.

Please answer the following questions:

· Please identify the current CEO of each of Cisco Systems and two of its competitors. For each CEO please examine his or her bio and any back ground information. Please summarize his or her previous successes.

· For each CEO, can you predict any future corporation initiatives as a result of his or her demonstrated track record?

· For each company please identify the senior executives today and in 2000. How many members of the team have changed? What percentage is this? How have profit and revenues changed in this same time period?

· If a change in CEO has occurred, please examine the date of the change. Can you suggest why the change occurred?

· Please identify two important things that each company is doing differently now as compared with 2000.

· So what?

1000 words Please cite your sources in the text and please reference them at the end of your assignment. Please end your write-up with one paragraph that summarizes what you think is the importance of this assignment.

Assignment 6

Module 6 - Changing Corporate Structure to Respond to an Acquisition

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is to help learner understand changes to a firm that arise as a result of acquiring a competitor.

Instructor Comments

Annual reports host a wealth of information. Annual reports can also differ with one version being filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission while a different version is hosted by the company website. This assignment challenges learners to assess how an acquisition by one major North American grocery chain of another might alter the resulting organization. Often annual reports are associated with financial statements. They also contain a wealth of information about a company’s operations. In this instance information available on the website of Sobeys and Safeway provide analysts with insight regarding executive teams, markets served, store brands, distribution networks, store locations, and number of employees.

Assignment

You should base your responses to the following questions on the insight found on the following websites.

· U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission http://www.sec.gov.

· Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com.

· Safeway Inc. Factbook http://www.safeway.ca.

· Sobeys Annual Report http://www.sobeys.com.

Assume that Safeway Inc. has acquired Sobeys. When using the Safeway website, please make use of The Factbook under the Investors heading. Please answer the following questions. In your opinion, how might this acquisition affect: :

· The make-up of the executive teams of both companies,

· The geographic markets served of both firms,

· The stored brands offered by both firms,

· The distribution network of both firms,

· The store locations of both firms, and

· The overall number of employees,

1000 words. Please cite your sources in the text and please reference them at the end of your assignment. Please end your write-up with one paragraph that summarizes what you think is the importance of this assignment.

Assignment 7

Module 7 - Changing Corporate Behaviour to Respond to Changing Demographics

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is to assess how the operations of a company might change when the demographic make-up of regions surrounding its operating locations change.

Instructor Comments

An important source of information for analysts of corporate behavior is census data. Statistics Canada and the U.S. Census Bureau host demographic data for their respective countries and make it available in many useful ways. In both cases, online researchers can access demographic profiles of towns, cities, counties, provinces and states in a matter of seconds. This is relevant for a course in change management as the demographic makeup of a region or locale can differ dramatically in different regions of the continent. Changes to the demography of a company’s operating locations can dramatically alter how it does business. The challenges of operating a business differ when the surrounding population is predominantly French as opposed to English or any other language. It also differs when much of the population is comprised of 1st generation immigrants as opposed to individuals families that have lived in a region for decades. Different demographic make ups of surround environments affect how a company sells, what is sells, who it hires, how it hires and why it hires. This assignment is about exploring how a change in office location might alter how a company does business.

Assignment

You should base your responses to the following questions on the insight found on the following websites.

· Federal Express http://www.fedex.com.

· Statistics Canada http://www.statcan.gc.ca.

· U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov.

In this situation, Federal Express has decided to open three new offices. One is in St. John’s Newfoundland, a second is in Miami, Florida, while a third office is in Surrey British Columbia. Please assume that they currently do not have operations in those cities. When using the Statistics Canada website, under the Find Statistics heading, click on Community Profiles. When using the U.S. Census Bureau website, under Data Finder, look at Population Finder.

Please answer the following questions:

· Please examine the demographic make-up of these three communities. What are the important ways that they differ?

· How much bigger or smaller would Fedex’s operations need to be to serve the local markets of Miami and Surrey? How did you arrive at your estimate?

· Based on the demographic data, how might Fedex’s workforce differ in Surrey and Miami from that in St. John's?

· What might Fedex do differently to serve each of these three markets? In other words, how might it slightly customize service to respond to each of these markets?

· So what?

Assignment 8

Module 8 - Changing Corporate Behaviour to Respond to Changing National Cultures

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is to assess how a change in the national culture of a company’s operating environment alters how a company conducts business.

Instructor Comments

Just as different demographic profiles can lead to changes in how a company operates and organizes itself so to can operating in locations with different national cultures. This exercise introduces you to three useful online sources of information regarding different national cultures. Each allows users to sort by country and within each country explore different aspects or features of that culture. One important sources of comparative information is hosted on a website titled Geert Hostede.com which is named after the researcher who developed the dataset. A second data source is hosted by the Centre for Intercultural Learning of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Government of Canada. A third source is the website of a U.K. based company, Kwintessential.com. This assignment helps learners understand how a company’s practices will need to change depending upon the country within which it operates.

Assignment

You should base your responses to the following questions on the insight found on the following websites.

· Newfoundland Capital Corporation http://www.ncc.ca.

· Centre for Cross Cultural Learning http://www.intercultures.ca.

· Geert Hostede.com http://www.geert-hostede.com.

· Kwintessential http://www.kwintessential.co.uk.

In this situation, Newfoundland Capital Corporation has decided to expand from its home market of St. John’s, Newfoundland. It is opening an office in Mexico City, Mexico and Dusseldorf, Germany.

Please answer the following questions:

· How might the training of the company’s sales force need to change in order to conduct business in these two new markets?

· How might the company alter its negotiation practices for each market?

· How would business communications practices need to change for each market?

· How will decision making and the use of hierarchy need to change for the company’s offices in these two markets assuming that local staff be hired to run the offices?