Here is some information about exam.
The Midterm Exam covers content from Weeks 1-3 and TCOs A and B. The Exam consists of four essay questions (3 @ 20 points each; 1 @ 50 points) and is worth 110 points of the 1,000 points for the course.
Students will have two hours to complete the Midterm Exam. Students can only take the Exam once, so be sure to have two full hours available before beginning it.
Keep an eye on the remaining time, and save your work often because when the time limit is reached, you will be exited automatically from the exam.
1. (TCO A) Your small services company has grown rapidly during its first two years and has outgrown the workspace that you have leased for three years. As the operations manager, you have been asked to lead a decision-making team to select a location for the growing company. Your desire is for the team to make an effective decision.
i. What criteria should your decision-making approach have to ensure that it is effective?
ii. Describe the eight elements for effective decision making used in a rational decision-making approach.
2. (TCO A) Understanding fundamental and means objectives are important to decision analysis and decision making. You are evaluating providing your sales team with upgraded smart phones to use when traveling on business and are looking at several different alternatives.
i. Identify the fundamental objectives.
ii. How would those objectives be used in the decision-making process?
iii. Identify the means objectives.
iv. How would the means objectives be used in the decision-making process?
3. (TCO A) Sally Jones, customer service manager for Gecko Insurance, is considering three job candidates for an open senior customer service representative position. In trying to decide which candidate is the best overall fit for the job, Sally has concluded that three criteria are important in this decision. First, of course, is to have a candidate with at least five years of customer service experience in the car insurance industry working in a call center. This objective is most important, twice as important as each of the other two criteria. The second criterion is to have a candidate with excellent customer service skills. The third criterion is for the candidate to have some experience in a coaching or supervisory role. Sally will be losing one of her managers to retirement in a year and wants to prepare this candidate for that job. The second and third benchmarks are equally important. Here is a summary of each of the candidates.
I) Robert Bentley: seven years of customer service experience; scored an 80 out of 100 on the customer service skills questionnaire; one year of experience training new customer service representatives.
II) Jane Porsche: five years of customer service experience; scored an 85 out of 100 on the customer service skills questionnaire; two years of supervisory experience.
III) Paula Mercedes: four years of customer service experience; scored a 75 out of 100 on the customer service skills questionnaire; no experience coaching or supervising.
i. What is Sally's problem or opportunity in this situation?
ii. What is the overall objective for Sally's decision? What are the fundamental objectives that support the overall objective?
iii. What are Sally's alternatives for this decision situation?
iv. Evaluate this decision situation using tradeoffs or a weighted scoring model. Based on that analysis, to which candidate should Sally offer the job?
4. (TCO B) Utilizing intuitive thinking in today's business environment as a manager is a must in order to make good decisions.
i. Why is it so important for managers to partner intuition with supporting data today in decision making?
ii. Develop three approaches for improving future decision making.