1. Ms. Lorraine Brown owns a local gas station in Your Town, USA. She recently conducted an audit of the convenience store products and discovered that she had a high shoplifting percentage. In trying to develop a strategy she thought about her staffing levels and potentially increasing the staffing in the gas station. As she considered this strategy, she also thought about the increase in overhead cost this would create, and how this would potentially decrease her profits or maybe even send her into a net loss business outcome. She made a decision to not use this strategy as a means to remedy her shoplifting problem. Please list, define and explain the quantitative decision making concept that would best identify the decision to not increase her staffing.
2. Mr. Jones owns five really successful brass manufacturing operations; 3 in Illinois and 2 in Wisconsin. Since the business opened 6 years ago, Mr. Jones has always handled the operations of the business to include all phases of the manufacturing, accounting, human resource, and marketing. Mr. Jones is doing so well that he has decided to expand the business by opening three additional operations. To prepare for this expansion strategy, Mr. Jones decided to hire professionals with skill sets in accounting, market and human resources, so that would free his time up to focus on the overall business strategy. Mr. Jones is really sharp and knew that this was the direction he was headed with this business, so he began expand his leadership team 18 months ago and hired 3 individuals to support him in each of the key areas listed. Unfortunately, Mr. Jones is very close to the company and very strong in his opinions and has not liked the decisions made by most of the people he has hired. In this 18-month period there have been 7 individuals within the three roles he created. Knowing that he still really needed assistance with the growth strategy, he decided to change his strategy and teach his son, a brand new college student, about the business he created. Making use of your understanding of quantitative decision making terminology, which concept(s) can be applied to assist in explaining Mr. Jones' decision to fire the individuals he hired and employee his son instead?
3. A Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for a non-profit agency is responsible for the investment strategy of the agencies funds to ensure a successful flow of revenue to support their business activity. The agency gets a lot of money from external donors, many of them consistently donate the same amount of money year after year. The CPA is trying to create a strategy to present to the Board of Directors that will assist in explaining the return on investment if they take various risk strategies. The CPA decides to illustrate an aggressive, moderate, and low risk invest strategy, with an understanding that the agency typical never invests above a moderate level of risk; however, the CPA is always required to show the options. Using your understanding of foundational terminology associated with quantitative decision-making, please explain what the CPA is doing? Please be sure that your answer includes specifically identified terminology from the course.