Assess how economic theory and concepts are utilized to maximize the quality of economic decision-making.

Directions

Begin by reviewing the following websites as resources for your Assignment:

* OECD Economic Indicators

* USA Department of Commerce Economic Indicators

* Department of Labor Economic Indicators

Select 6–10 economic indicators that are of particular relevance to your firm and explain how they affect the performance of the company. Then, outline strategies on how the firm should respond to the changes in the economic indicators with the goal of maximizing revenues in the years ahead.

Criteria

● It must be a minimum of 5 pages long (excluding title page, references, etc.,)

● It must be APA formatted with citations to your sources and your last page should list all references used. 

● You must use a variety of three objective, high quality, and current sources. Peer reviewed articles, articles published in journals, textbooks.

● Note that Wikipedia, Investopedia, etc. are not considered as reliable resources for this research.

Students, please view the “Submit a Clickable Rubric Assignment” in the Student Center.

Instructors, training on how to grade is within the Instructor Center.

Assignment 1: Staffing Plan for a Growing Business
Due Week 6 and worth 280 points

Please choose from one (1) of the scenarios below. Note: The scenario that you choose in this assignment will be the one (1) with which you continue for Assignment 2.

Scenario 1

You are a Human Resources Manager of an expanding technology company consisting of 170 employees that develops and distributes small electronic devices. Over the past two (2) years, a research group formed, designed, and built prototypes of small remote surveillance cameras used for security. Recently, your company won a contract to build and provide these remote surveillance cameras to various government agencies. The contract will begin with your company supplying these cameras to agencies within your home state. If all orders are fulfilled sufficiently, the contract will be expanded to supplying agencies outside of your home state.

For the immediate future, you will need to secure a larger facility and hire more staff to sustain the first part of the contract. This staff will consist of ten (10) Assembly Technicians, one (1) Certified Quality Control Engineer, one (1) Contract Administrator, and one (1) Office Support Paraprofessional. Meanwhile, there is a contract clause requiring that you provide a staffing plan in order to ensure future product deliveries and sustain the possible future growth.   Â

Scenario 2

You are a former certified education administrator who departed your former position to become the owner of a small, in-home day care consisting of you and a part-time assistant where you care for children from age three (3) to age ten (10). Over the course of time, your demographic population has increased due to significant business growth that has resulted in many families relocating to your area. With more businesses projected to move to the area and the building of new housing developments, it is projected that this growth could be long term.

You have decided that this is a good opportunity to expand your day care business as you have received many inquiries for childcare. In order to comply with your home state regulations, you will require a larger facility and will need to hire additional staff in order to sustain the larger demand for day care. This staff will consist of five (5) Certified Day Care Professionals, one (1) Registered Nurse Professional, five (5) After-School Assistants and one (1) Office Support Paraprofessional. You have secured approval for a bank loan and qualify for future loans for future expansion if your current endeavor is successful. Meanwhile, the state in which you operate has requested that you provide a staffing plan before it will issue licensure for your expanded capacity.

Note: You may create and / or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of these assignments.

Select one (1) of the scenarios and write a four to five (4-5) page paper in which you:

1. Identify two (2) types of staffing models that could apply to your chosen scenario and determine which model would be best suited for efficiency, productivity, and possible future growth. Examine the significant effect of each identified staffing model on processes that may be occurring within the organization (e.g., outsourcing, contingent workers, consulting firms, etc.).
2. Predict the major potential legal issues that you may encounter when establishing equal employment opportunities and diversity within the workplace while still aiming to acquire employees with the needed certifications and credentials. Next, explain the method of achieving transparency within your staffing model. Justify your response.
3. Specify three (3) tasks that you need to perform to identify, analyze, and develop job requirements and task statements that you will include in formalized job descriptions. Next, predict the frequency with which you would need to review and adjust these job descriptions as your company progresses. Provide a rationale for your response.
4. Describe three (3) methods to deal with high employee turnover and the availability of employees with required knowledge, skills, or abilities. Next, describe the primary manner in which the described succession-planning methods would be beneficial to your company. Justify your response.
5. Use at least three (3) quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

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Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Explain the role of staffing to support an organization’s strategy and improve productivity.
• Develop a model for staffing an organization that supports the firm’s Human Resources Management strategy and sustains productive operations.
• Summarize the key legal compliance issues associated with staffing organizations.
• Explain the planning considerations for staffing organizations, the use of job analysis, and the components of a staffing plan.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in staffing organizations.
• Write clearly and concisely about staffing organizations using proper writing mechanics.

Click here to view the grading rubric.

Discuss this week’s objectives with your team. Your discussion should include the topics you feel comfortable with, any topics you struggled with, and how the weekly topics relate to application in your field.

Prepare a 350- to 1,050-word paper detailing the findings of your discussion.

OBJECTIVES:

• Compare and contrast leadership theories.
• 2.2Evaluate the characteristics of established leadership styles.

Discuss the 5 brand assets which are drivers in most large companies. How do they relate to the company you are writing about?

These are the 5 brand assets:

1. Brand awareness 
2. Emotional connection 
3. Brand loyalty 
4. Product line extension 
5. Price premium

The company I wrote about is Whole Foods. Basically just discuss how Whole Foods relates to these five brand assets. It doesn’t have to be a specific length as long as it is described effectively.

Reply to this post in 200 or more words.

Working in a manufacturing environment I found the section on strategic operations issues, outlined in this chapter, very informative.  The detailed descriptions of the manufacturing systems, intermittent and continuous, helped shed some light on why my company specifically makes certain businesses choices.  We operate under intermittent systems.  The job shop description matches our current manufacturing capabilities.  “In intermittent systems (job shops), the item is normally processed sequentially, but the work and sequence of the process vary.”  (Wheelen, Hunger, Bamford, & Hoffman, (2015), p. 146).  Although we do operate a machine shop, the construction of products is very labor intensive.  As discussed in the text are machinery constitutes a fixed cost for my organization.  Our products are client specific thus each have different production times and material requirements, this increases our variable costs.  The text also highlights that to be successful operating an intermittent system an organization should narrow its focus in an industry to a specific niche in market.  As a furniture manufacturer, my organization niche is store fixtures.  One important benefit of operating as an intermittent system has over continuous system is that, “During an economic downturn, the firm with less automation and thus less leverage is more likely to survive comfortably because a drop in sales primarily affects variable costs.” (Wheelen, Hunger, Bamford, & Hoffman, (2015), p. 146).