The COVID-19 Pandemic has highlighted the interdependence between countries and economies. While it is clear that it is having and may continue to have a significant economic impact on many (if not all) countries, it is arguable that small open economies are more vulnerable to external shocks such as this than larger more closed economies In the context of this sudden, unexpected, external shock: (a) Set out the nature of the interdependence of economies and their inter-relationships (b) Discuss the impact of global linkages on the performance of a small economy such as Ireland (or any other small open economy)
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imagine you have been asked by your local church, synagogue, scouting group, sports team or some other community organization, to give a 15-20 minute talk about addiction. Imagine there has been some concern in the community about how to deal with the problem. You’ve been asked to talk about what happens to the brain when people become addicted.
Your presentation may be in any of the following forms:
· PowerPoint presentation with notes (10 slides minimum, APA format)
· 3-5 page paper (APA format)
· Other presentation formats (must be approved by the instructor by the middle of the week)
Your PowerPoint should:
· include citations and references in each slide (as appropriate) and a references slide at the end of the presentation.
· reflect not only your opinion but also your familiarity with the material from the course.
· Pay attention to your formatting and professionalism of the presentation.
· Alternative presentations must include citations and a reference page and should be professional in appearance.
Your paper should:
· be three to five pages long.
· reflect not only your opinion but also your familiarity with the material from the course.
· be typed into a Word or other word processing document, formatted in APA style.
· include In-text citations in the body of your writing and full source citations in your reference page.
· be written using have font size 10-12 pt. (Times New Roman 12, Arial 11, Calibri 11, Lucida Sans Unicode 10, Georgia 11).
· be double spaced and include an APA formatted title and reference page.
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In your own words, explain the symptoms of the disorder you have identified.
Briefly explain the etiology of this disorder; be specific.
Based upon your perceptions as to the etiology, provide some specific current treatment options.
On the Internet, find at least one organization that would be an excellent resource for clients or family members who suffer from this disorder. Briefly discuss what the organization provides and make sure to list the URL and the name of the organization.
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Dissemination of research results may be done any number of ways, such as through journal article submissions, conference presentations, professional and community lectures, peer-review sessions, and several variations of formal and informal settings. Different audiences have different needs and expectations. A rule of thumb is to follow the guidelines for your particular format, whatever these guidelines may be. Every journal has specific instructions to authors. Every conference includes specific instructions on how to submit and how to present. Most groups sponsoring oral presentations will let you know their expectations if you ask.
What is less obvious sometimes is the “fit” between the material that you will present and the specific audience. For example, if you are conducting a presentation of survey findings for parents of elementary school children, your results need to be simple, clear, and free of unnecessary jargon. Conversely, at an academic conference, you may highlight and focus on the regression techniques employed. Ideal dissemination is correlated with knowledge of your audience.
You can ask yourself several questions that will help you choose a dissemination strategy. These questions include the following:
Who is my audience?
Who are the stakeholders?
What is the general level of research methods understanding for 1 and 2?
What should be presented?
What should not be presented?
What is the overall goal of the dissemination?
Considering the questions above, search for and select an empirical article from the Walden Library related to survey research to use for this Discussion. Consider the relationship between the survey findings and research problem in the article you selected. Think about how you would disseminate the results to two different audiences and how you might apply these results to a social change context.
With these thoughts in mind:
Post by Day 4 an explanation of how the research findings in the empirical article attached are related to the research problem and why this relationship is important. Using the same findings, explain how you would disseminate the results to two specific and different audiences. Justify the need for optimal dissemination strategies for different audiences. Finally, explain how the research findings might be applied to effect social change. Be specific, and provide examples.
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1. Discrete Random Variables. Suppose that we are interested in the number of cups of coffee drank by a (randomly selected) student at UCLA. This quantity can be represented as a random variable Y with probability mass function:
if a ∈ {0,1,2}
if a = 3
if a = 4 ,
if a = 5 0 otherwise
where c is an unknown constant.
(a) Explain why the number of cups of coffee drank in a day by a randomly selected student at UCLA is a random variable.
(b) What is the relevant outcome space of the random variable Y ?
(c) Explain what the distribution of this random variable represents. In other words distribution of Y assigns a probability to any subset of the outcome space. How do we interpret this probability? (d) Solve for c. (Hint: Recall that PY (OY ) = 1 so that Pa∈OY pY (a) must equal one).
(e) What is the probability that a randomly selected student at UCLA drinks at least 3 cups of coffee a day, PY (Y ≥ 3)?
(f) What is the expected number of cups of coffee drank per day for a randomly selected student at UCLA?
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Consider a spring-mass system with the mass being 4kg. The spring has a coefficient of stiffness of 16 N/m. The spring is initially stretched to 10cm. Given that the maximum stretch is 12cm, what is the initial speed? (Corresponding to a 10 cm stretch)?
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1.A standard 1 kilogram weight is a cylinder 41.5 mm in height and 51.0 mm in diameter. What is the density of the material? (answer unit: kg/m^3) *
2.A crystalline solid consists of atoms stacked up in a repeating lattice structure. Consider a crystal as shown in Figure a. The atoms reside at the corners of cubes of side L = 0.160 nm. One piece of evidence for the regular arrangement of atoms comes from the flat surfaces along which a crystal separates, or cleaves, when it is broken. Suppose this crystal cleaves along a face diagonal, as shown in Figure b. Calculate the spacing d between two adjacent atomic planes that separate when the crystal cleaves. (answer unit: nm) *
3.Assume the equation x = At3 + Bt describes the motion of a particular object, with x having the dimension of length and t having the dimension of time. Determine the dimensions of the constants A and B. (Use the following as necessary: L and T, where L is the unit of length and T is the unit of time.) [A] = *
4.Assume the equation x = At3 + Bt describes the motion of a particular object, with x having the dimension of length and t having the dimension of time. Determine the dimensions of the constants A and B. (Use the following as necessary: L and T, where L is the unit of length and T is the unit of time.) [B] = *
5.Determine the dimensions of the derivative dx/dt = 3At2 + B. (Use the following as necessary: L and T, where L is the unit of length and T is the unit of time.) [dx/dt] = *
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The management team is comfortable that the service level agreements can be met with respect to things they can control, namely employee performance and knowledge base quality. They are, however, concerned that because the majority of the help desk support infrastructure is based on Web-based self-service, an outage on the Web site could lead to missed service levels.
Describe what can be done to ensure the security and availability of the Web-based infrastructure and what the company can do to keep the help desk running in the event of a Web site outage (business continuity). The discussion about security should focus on 2 levels:
Network infrastructure/security
Application infrastructure/security
Finally, discuss cultural implications for IT support to encourage effective interactions with those customers who differ in beliefs, behaviors, values, or views. Make sure to cover personal cultural rules/biases and their impact to societies.
Add the discussion about security and business continuity to the section titled Performance Management.
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(The 520m maximum length has been set so that the longsection will fit onto 1 A4 sheet of squared paper. If you cannot reach the Parking Area within 520m, design your road as far as 520.00m and make it finish there at the RL set for you. At the end of your submission, you must report to the client how far short of the Parking Area your road finishes.)
Assume that the contours are correct with 90% confidence.
Horizontal Alignment The first straight is shown in red and the first Intersection Point (IP) must be at the end of the red line. You must draw ONLY TWO (2) more straights to complete the road alignment. These straights must allow the road to be designed to meet the requirements of the vertical design as listed below.
Use a protractor to find the bearing of the first straight and then measure the deflection angle for each curve to the nearest degree. Use Tucker’s Rd with its bearing of 0o, as your azimuth. Using your measured angles, calculate the bearings of each straight.
Scale the distances from Tucker’s Rd to IP1, IP1 to IP2 and IP2 to the End, in mm and using your scale factor found above, calculate the distance in metres. ROUND THIS DISTANCE OFF TO THE NEAREST METRE. As this is a preliminary design, and also to simplify the calculations, the bearings and distances of each straight are to be adopted as, and quoted to, the nearest degree and nearest metre in your answer sheet. (You are the design engineer and so can make life easy for yourself by making this decision about the straights. While you can make this decision arbitrarily, after that everything must be calculated mathematically and accurately – no more ‘rounding off’ must be done.)
Each horizontal curve is to have radius of 70m.Calculate the tangent distance and arc length for each curve and show them in the table of answers.Calculate the chainages of each of the four horizontal curve T.P.s and the end of the road, and any other points listed, and show them all in the table of answers.
On your plan, plot each curve. (Calculating the external distance will give you a third point to help you draw the curve freehand.) Also clearly show the lengths of each straight (IP – IP) and the bearing of that straight.
Vertical Alignment Using the contours on the map provided, draw a longsection of the Centre Line of your road at scales; horizontal 1:2,000 and vertical 1:200. (Please read the submission section for detailed guidance about drawing the longsection.)
Design a vertical alignment of the centre line of the road showing grades and vertical curves. The vertical alignment must meet the following criteria:
The road must start at RL 15.90 and must finish at exactly RL 32.10 at the chainage you have calculated as being the end of the road. The final grade of your road into the parking site must be between +2.0% and +0.5%. The maximum grade allowed at any point along the road is 10%.Vertical curves must have lengths of 60m or 80m only.In exceptional circumstances, a V.C. of 40m length may be permitted but you will need to explain why it must be used. The I.P. of each vertical curve must be located at an even 10m chainage (i.e. 120, 350 etc. and must not be placed at odd locations such as 376.5). All grades used must be to no greater precision than 0.1%, except for the final grade to the end of the line. (i.e. grades such as 3.1% must be used for every grade, except the final one where additional decimal places may be shown, if necessary, to ensure that the Design RL meets the set RL of the parking area at the chainage for the end of the road. Every change of grade requires a vertical curve. (Assume that your road will meet Tucker’s Road at the nominated RL and can start at any grade you wish to use. No vertical curve will be needed at this road junction.) Tucker’s Road may not be at ground level, which is shown by the contours.
Cut and Fill Except for the two locations specified, the vertical design should keep cut and fill to less than 1m in depth. Working by eye, and not mathematically, try to balance cut and fill along the road.
Between the two banks of the river, your road must be between 0.5m and 1.5m above the bank R.L.,so that precast box culverts can be installed. For no more than 15m either side of the 30m contour line, a cut of up to 2m is permitted.
Complete the table with your vertical curve calculations for the design levels.
Calculate the Design Levels for the locations as specified: every 30m of running chainage along the road, where there is NO vertical curve; (i.e. 0, 30, 60, 90 …300, 330, 360 etc. … and the end of the road). For every vertical curve, please calculate the Design Levels at every 10m from V.C. T.P.1 to V.C. T.P.2.Also calculate the chainage (to 2 d.p.) and RL of the low point of the road at the river crossing.
Watercourse Information and Area Restrictions The banks of the creek where the road crosses it are at R.L.10.20
The area of land adjacent to the creek, which runs to the river, that is bounded by the 15m contour line, the river and the two dashed lines is prime agricultural land and the road is not permitted to go through this area.
Survey Party Instructions A survey party has run an EDM traverse from point A, whose coordinates are 300.000m E, 600.000m N, on the centre line of Tucker’s Road via point Y, to a point X which is close to the parking area P. Calculate the coordinates of point Xusing the survey data as shown. Also, using your bearings and distances of each straight of your road, calculate the coordinates of the end of the road. Then calculate the bearing and distance for the survey party to set out the end of your road from point X. The curve set out data has already been requested.
Finally provide instructions to the survey party for any extra information needed or areas to checked for you to be able to finalise your road design.
Precision of Calculations Needed All Chainages for horizontal T.P.s etc should be quoted to two decimal places.
For the horizontal curve setting out data, please show the arc lengths and long chord distances to two decimal places of a metre and the setting out deflection angles to the nearest 1”. All levels on the longsection table must be correct to two decimal places. The grades you nominate for the road design must be to no greater precision than one decimal place, except for the final grade, and all R.L.s must agree perfectly with the grade shown. Your road must end exactly at R.L. given for the parking area at your calculated chainage for the end of the road.
Submission 1) The plan showing your straights with the bearings and the scaled distances (0 to IP1), (IP1 to IP2) and (IP2 to the END) clearly marked. Each horizontal curve must be plotted.
2) Horizontal and Vertical Curve Tables completed on the answer sheet.
3) A Longsection, showing: a) in the drawing section, the natural surface, grade lines and the road design. You must also note the extent of each grade and the regions where the vertical curves are located. Also show each IPRL and Mid Ordinate value, as per the example provided. b) in the data rows, the distances and natural surface RLs used to plot the natural surface; the distances and Design RLs at the chainage of each IP of the vertical alignment only.
(Longsection guidance – it is strongly recommended that you use an A4 sheet of 2mm graph paper to draw your longsection. The bottom three rows should show Distance, Design RL and Natural Surface RL. To ensure your longsection fits on the page, the RL of the base line of the plot should be 5m, making the very top of the page RL 33m.) See a detailed example online.
4) Instructions for the survey party:
a) data to mark location of the end of your design from point X, (as per the tables provided) b) data to set out each horizontal curve from its first T.P. by deflection angles and long chords for points at running chainages as requested within each horizontal curve, and the crown of each curve, (as per the tables provided).c) instructions to the survey party for any extra information you wish them to gather, or further setting out, for you to finish your design.
Submission Component and Marks Awarded Marks Plan 1) including finding plan scale and chainages 11 Horizontal Curve calcs (leading to chainages) 2) 20 Longsection 3) 3 VC Calc table: Grades, ordinates, Design RLs 2) 15 Low Point Ch and RL 2) 5 Design meeting specifications and design concepts 3) 13 Traverse and missing line calculations 4)a 8 Curve set out data 4)b 8 Instructions to Survey Party 4)c 7
NOTE This exercise is an assessment of the work done in the Surveying subject this semester. Do not research road design information and go beyond the calculations shown to you in the Surveying classes. You will be marked on the accuracy of your calculations and meeting the specifications. You should therefore treat the calculations of the horizontal and vertical alignments as being totally separate components.
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1 Source: http://www.kenexa.com/abou_hist.html; http://www.kenexa.com/abou_over.html, accessed December 1, 2006. 2 All funds are in U.S. dollars unless noted otherwise.
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In the last 19 years, Kenexa had garnered extensive experience and expertise in providing clients tools for human capital management. The team-oriented workforce at Kenexa played a vital role in this regard. The personnel comprising these teams had strong analytical, cross-functional and multi-industry expertise. Numerous Kenexa employees had PhDs in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and were well-recognized experts in both the practitioner and academic communities. JACK W. WILEY Jack Wiley, executive director of the Research Institute at Kenexa, had 30 years of experience with research on linking employee opinion survey results to organizational performance measures of customer satisfaction and business performance. Based on his research, Wiley had developed WorkTrendsTM, a unique database of employee opinions. Previously, Wiley had been president and CEO of Gantz Wiley Research — a consulting firm he co-founded in 1986 — that was acquired by Kenexa in August 2006. Prior to that, he was director of organizational research at Control Data Corporation (now Ceridian) and held personnel research positions at National Bank of Detroit and Ford Motor Company. With a PhD in Organizational Psychology from the University of Tennessee, Wiley was also a licensed psychologist and an accredited senior professional in human resources. He had written numerous articles and book chapters on conducting organizational surveys and had made many presentations to professional associations around the globe. His professional affiliations included memberships in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), the Human Resources Planning Society (HRPS), and the Academy of Management (AoM). SCOTT M. BROOKS Brooks, who had a B.A. from Cornell University and a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Ohio State University, shouldered responsibility for managing WorkTrendsTM and developed customized employee and survey research products for Kenexa’s projects. Additionally, he worked closely with Wiley to prepare feedback for Kenexa’s clients based on the analysis of employee/customer survey data. Previously, Brooks worked for the retailer Mervyn’s, a division of Dayton Hudson Corporation. He had 15 years of survey research experience and had authored many presentations and publications on employee measurement topics. He was a member of SIOP, AoM, the Society for Human Resource Management and the American Psychological Association. RATIONALE UNDERLYING WILEY’S AND BROOKS’ APPROACH TO PROJECTS Wiley firmly believed in the notion that effective workforce management was the key to better performance. This belief was grounded in research by others, but also in his own research and work with many clients. Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer had summarized relevant research:
Achieving competitive success through people involves fundamentally altering how we think about the workforce and the employment relationship. It means achieving success by working with people, not by replacing them or limiting the scope of their activities. It entails seeing the workforce as a source of competitive advantage, not just as a cost to be
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minimized or avoided. Firms that take this perspective are often able to successfully outmaneuver and outperform their rivals.3
Wiley’s own research aimed at diagnosing the organizational practices that were indicative of better workforce management and, at the same time, were predictors of organizational success. For that purpose, he used data from employee surveys, customer surveys and business performance measures. The findings from his consulting projects consistently showed: • Customer loyalty was a potent predictor of business performance. Moreover, customer loyalty could
be forecasted from employee perceptions of an organization’s customer orientation and the extent of emphasis on service quality.
• Specific leadership practices — customer orientation, quality emphasis, employee training and employee involvement — created an environment of service excellence and separated leading organizations from lagging ones. Organizations focusing on these four practices had employees who knew their tasks, worked well in teams, were more satisfied and were better able to deliver quality service to customers. That capability translated into the delivery of products and services of better value, thereby contributing to customer loyalty, higher market share and better bottom-line organizational performance.
According to Wiley, these findings suggested a chain of activities (see Exhibits 2a and 2b) that built a high-performance organization (see Exhibit 3):
The more visible and present certain organizational values and leadership practices (e.g. customer orientation, quality emphasis, employee training, and employee involvement) are in a given work environment, the more energized and productive the workforce. In turn, the more energized and productive the workforce, the greater the satisfaction and loyalty of customers, and with a time lag, the stronger the long-term business performance of the organization.4
The High Performance Model illuminated the interrelationships among organizational practices, employee perceptions of their work environment, customer satisfaction and business performance. It provided a well-grounded argument to clients. Organizational success was contingent on the ability to build “long- term and mutually beneficial relationships among the company, employees and customers.”5 For that reason, organizations needed to embrace the leadership practices outlined in the High Performance Model and create a work environment where employees felt capable of, and were able to deliver top-quality service to customers. The ability to deliver exceptional service translated into improved customer satisfaction and retention, ultimately improving the company’s growth and bottom-line. Employees, too, felt more satisfied with their jobs as a result of their ability to provide excellent service and their continued positive interactions with satisfied customers. Wiley noted that the interrelationships articulated in the High Performance Model were affected by elements of the work characteristics and contextual factors. In a retail bank setting, for example, certain bank-branch characteristics (e.g. frequency of customer contact at a branch) might differentially influence 3 J. Pfeffer, “Producing Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through the Effective Management of People,” Academy of Management Executive, 19(4), 2005, pp. 95-106. 4 J. W. Wiley and B. Campbell, “Using linkage research to drive high performance: A case study in Organizational Development,” Getting Action from Organizational Surveys: New Concepts, Techniques, and Applications, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 2006, pp. 150-180. 5 S. D. Pugh, et al., “Driving service effectiveness through employee-customer linkages,” Academy of Management Executive, 16(4), 2002, pp. 73-84.
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the relationship between employee opinions about elements of their work environment and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, he suggested that the interrelationships among employee perceptions of their work environment, customer satisfaction and business performance grew stronger with a time lag. For example, positive customer perceptions translated into potential repeat purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations of a bank’s products and services to friends and relatives, resulting in improved performance over the long term rather than over the short term. When applied for organizational diagnoses, the High Performance Model involved integration and correlation of data from employees, customers and business performance metrics. Both employees and customers were considered as subject matter experts of the service environment. Kenexa gathered customer and employee reports using surveys. A typical employee survey focused on employee descriptions of the aspects of their business-unit’s work environment (e.g. the extent to which top management emphasized the importance of top-quality service) that were relevant for building service capability. Similarly, the customer survey collected data on customer perceptions of service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Finally, the data from employee and customer surveys was integrated with organizational performance data. The integrated data was analyzed for the interrelationships among employee perceptions, customer reports, and business-unit performance. These interrelationships pointed out the key drivers of customer satisfaction and performance that separated better-performing business units from the lower-performing ones. This was critical to understanding where an organization stood in terms of managing the core drivers and what managers could change in their organizations to better realize the full potential of these drivers. Kenexa’s consultants focused on providing tangible action-planning recommendations to clients so that the reformulated organizational practices reflected an increased emphasis on the crucial drivers. HOW KENEXA EXECUTED PROJECTS Kenexa followed a five-phase model to design and execute a research project for its clients. During the initial planning phase, members of the Kenexa research team developed a customized project plan for serving the needs of the client. This was followed by the survey development phase during which Kenexa’s consultants tailored their standard survey instruments and incorporated the key indicators that determined employee/customer opinions for the clients. Once adapted, the survey instrument was administered using a variety of formats, including interactive voice recognition (IVR) and the Internet, as well as with paper and pencil. Kenexa also provided help desk support for the survey respondents during the administration phase. Once the data had been collected, Kenexa’s consultants, using a Web-enabled technology platform, organized and analyzed the data and prepared it for reporting back to the client. Finally, Kenexa’s executives provided action-planning feedback to the client, translating the linkage research results into actions for improving workplace performance. THE NCB PROJECT On April 16, 2005, Wiley and Brooks gave a presentation on the High Performance Model at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in Los Angeles, California. Katharine Graham, senior vice-president of Organization and Leadership Development at NCB, was in the audience and was intrigued by the possibility of how insights from the High Performance Model approach could help make NCB more effective. Graham’s informal discussions with Wiley and Brooks at SIOP materialized into NCB’s decision, in June 2005, to conduct employee and customer opinion surveys that
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would: (1) provide an understanding of employee/customer opinions and their relation to performance of NCB’s branches in order to differentiate better-performing branches from the poorer ones; (2) identify priorities for organizational development activities; and (3) serve as a benchmark to track the progress of organizational development activities. NCB NCB, headquartered in Chicago, was a large retail branch banking organization that provided the full range of retail banking services (e.g. accepting deposits, consumer lending, wealth management services and safe deposit box operations) to its clients through 128 branches located in six mid-western states. It also had a network of 264 ATMs and an on-line full-service electronic banking center. Based on 2005 financial data, NCB had approximately $7.5 billion in assets, $5.1 billion in deposits and a net income of $104 million. As of year-end 2005, NCB served about 70,000 customers and employed a workforce of 2,884, including 84 at its Chicago headquarters. At NCB, headquarters was responsible for setting the overall strategic direction. The headquarters’ role included new product design, branch layout design, public and media relations, and marketing strategy conceptualization. Branches, on the other hand, were responsible for execution of the products. Branches acted independently, catered to their geographic region and reported to the headquarters. A typical branch was comprised of about 20 employees, including a branch manager, assistant branch managers, personal bankers, banking assistants and tellers. The branch manager was responsible for coordinating with the headquarters and managing the day-to-day functioning of the branch. With ultimate responsibility for branch performance, the branch manager needed to motivate the team, drive sales and lead the way in how the branch delivered excellent customer service. The manager also served as the bank’s liaison with local community groups and institutions. The assistant branch managers were responsible for working closely with the manager to create a high-energy, high- performance culture within the branch. As “champions” of customer service and sales practices, they were expected to focus on meeting and exceeding branch targets. They were specifically required to identify opportunities for training of the branch personnel if branch performance was falling behind. The personal banker(s) were responsible for the portfolio of personal services offered to existing and new consumers: personal loans, credit card applications, and day-to-day banking — savings and checking account plans, safety deposit offerings, travel and medical insurance products, and wealth management products. Banking assistants worked in the banking hall of the branch and were usually one of the first employees who came in contact with the customers. As such, they were responsible for talking to the customers about the bank’s products and services and guiding them to the appropriate banking personnel. The tellers were responsible for cashing checks, accepting deposits and loan payments, processing withdrawals, accepting payments for customers’ utility bills and charge cards, processing necessary paperwork for certificates of deposit and selling travelers’ checks and foreign currencies. As the quintessential face of NCB, tellers were expected to be courteous, attentive and patient in dealing with the customers. They needed to work as a team and, together with banking assistants, they were expected to be resourceful in spotting potential sales opportunities. The personnel at NCB were focused on providing value-enhancing and need-satisfying services to its clientele. In that vein, NCB was dedicated to meeting and exceeding the banking needs of current and new customers. That was an ongoing challenge given that the competition for banking customers continued to
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be intense. NCB management firmly believed in the bank’s ability to offer a broad array of services and products at competitive prices and counted on its committed and knowledgeable employee base to deliver its products and services. THE NCB PROJECT GETS UNDERWAY Wiley and Brooks led the team that designed and administered the surveys for the NCB project. Their project plan included: (1) the administration of two surveys for all the 128 branches of NCB — an employee opinion survey in the fourth quarter of 2005 and a branch-level customer satisfaction survey shortly thereafter; (2) organization of the data collected from the two surveys at the branch level; (3) collection of performance data available from NCB headquarters for the 128 branches; and (4) integration of the resulting data for the purposes of conducting the analyses. The Employee Opinion Survey Wiley and Brooks began the NCB project during July and August of 2005 with the design of the employee opinion survey. For that purpose, they adapted a standard employee survey instrument to NCB’s requirements. The resulting survey contained 54 questions and assessed employee opinions on specific elements of their work environment. These elements were organized along nine themes in the survey: customer orientation, quality emphasis, employee training, involvement/empowerment, communication, teamwork, engagement, intention to leave, and satisfaction with compensation and benefits (Exhibit 4 provides examples on questions6 intended to measure different themes). While answering the survey, employees indicated their agreement with the survey questions on five-point scales ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The survey package identified employees on the basis of their branch affiliation and not their names. This confidential survey was administered, during October to November 2005, on company time to the employees in 128 branches; 2,230 employees returned usable surveys. The Customer Satisfaction Survey In September 2005, the NCB project’s team developed a customized retail branch customer opinion survey for the NCB project. The resulting survey had 40 questions aimed at measuring customer opinions on specific service issues (these issues were organized along four themes: satisfaction with service quality, satisfaction with teller, satisfaction with branch in general and facilities at the branch, and satisfaction with personal banker) and opinions on customer loyalty. Exhibit 4 provides examples of questions7 intended to measure different themes. Similar to the employee opinion survey, customers indicated their extent of satisfaction with the survey questions on five-point scales ranging from 1 (Very Dissatisfied) to 5 (Very Satisfied). In addition, the survey assessed the frequency of contact these customers had with the branch’s service personnel. The questions, intended for this purpose, asked the customers to indicate the number of times they had used the services of bank tellers or personal bankers during the last six months. The
6 The employee opinion survey contained at least two questions intended to measure each theme of employee opinions. While each employee responded to individual questions, an average of the responses on the set of questions intended to measure each theme served as corresponding employee opinion score for that theme. 7 The customer satisfaction survey contained at least two questions intended to measure each theme of customer opinions. While each customer responded to individual questions, an average of the responses on the set of questions intended to measure each theme served as corresponding customer opinion score for that theme.
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response categories were: 1, “not at all;” 2, “1-3 times;” 3, “4-6 times;” 4, “7-10 times;” and 5, “11 or more times.” The survey was mailed to customers’ homes (with around 300 randomly selected customer households per branch) during December 2005. The survey did not ask for customer names but identified customers on the basis of branch affiliation; 14,114 customers returned usable surveys. BUSINESS PERFORMANCE AND BRANCH LOCATION DATA In May 2006, Graham sent data on two key indicators of bank-branch performance for all 128 branches: (1) teller productivity, computed as the volume of transactions handled by tellers in relation to the number of full-time equivalent teller staff; and (2) overall productivity ratio, a measure of the amount of revenue generated by the branch for every dollar of personnel expense. The business performance measures were based on 2005 year-end data. In her email, Graham mentioned that the NCB management speculated about the possibility of different business dynamics in branches located in metropolitan areas versus those in non-metropolitan areas. She provided data on branch location (i.e. whether a branch was located in a metropolitan or non-metropolitan area). DATA AGGREGATION TEAM FOR THE NCB PROJECT GETS TO WORK Once the data from the two surveys had been collected and business performance data from NCB was available, research assistants at Kenexa’s Minneapolis office entered the employee and customer survey data as two separate data files, with responses from 2,230 employees and 14,114 customers respectively, and cross-checked for data entry errors. Once the initial screening was complete, the research assistants calculated scores for the employee/customer opinion themes by computing the averages for the set of questions intended to measure a particular theme. The resulting files were sent to the project consultants who conducted initial statistical tests on each of the two surveys to assess whether or not respondents of the same branch responded similarly to the survey questions and if these responses differed across branches. These tests involved testing for within-bank branch versus between-bank branch variance. The project consultants found support for within-branch similarity in responses and between-branch variance in responses and therefore aggregated each of the data files such that they represented employee and customer8 data for the 128 branches. Finally, these two data files were merged and combined with the business performance and branch location data and sent to Wiley and Brooks for analysis (see Exhibit 5 for a list of variables included in the final data file; Exhibit 6 provides a sample from the NCB data file).
8 For the purposes of making the branch level customer data on the frequency of usage of the services of bank tellers or personal bankers amenable for analyses, project consultants for the NCB project team did a median split and transformed the frequency of contact variable into a categorical variable (see Exhibit 5 for the two categories represented by the transformed variable ‘ccon’).
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WHAT NEXT? Wiley and Brooks had three weeks to prepare a presentation for NCB’s senior leadership team at Katharine Graham’s Chicago office. Wiley had last met Graham at the 2006 SIOP conference in Dallas on May 5, 2006 where she had indicated the eagerness with which the top management team at NCB was looking forward to hearing the findings of this project. As Wiley and Brooks helped themselves to a cup of coffee, they considered how best to make sense of the data so as to draft an insightful presentation for the October 9th meeting.
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Exhibit 1
SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY KENEXA
Source: Company files.
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Exhibit 2a
THE HIGH PERFORMANCE MODEL: CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Exhibit 2b
THE HIGH PERFORMANCE MODEL: ANALYTICAL MODEL Source: Company files.
Data collected from employees
Data collected from customers
Business performance data
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Exhibit 3
Source: Company files.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE ORGANIZATIONS
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Exhibit 4
ILLUSTRATIVE QUESTIONS FROM THE EMPLOYEE OPINION SURVEY
1. Where I work, customer problems are corrected quickly
2. Senior management shows by its actions that customer service is a top
priority
Emphasis on quality Involvement
1. Where I work, day-to-day decisions demonstrate that quality is a top priority
2. Where I work, we set clear performance standards for service quality
1. Sufficient effort is made to get the opinions and thinking of people who work here
2. Where I work, employees are encouraged to participate in making decisions which affect their work
Training Communication
1. I receive enough training to help me continually improve my job performance
2. I receive adequate training on National Choice Bank’s products and services
1. Senior management gives employees a clear picture of the direction
in which the company is headed
2. I get enough warning about changes that are going to take place at National Choice Bank
Teamwork
1. Where I work, management encourages a teamwork approach to getting things done
2. The people I work with cooperate to get the work done
Engagement 1. I like the kind of work I do
2. My work gives me a feeling of accomplishment
Compensation and Benefits
1. The amount of pay I get at National Choice Bank
2. The total benefits program at National Choice Bank Source: Company files.
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Exhibit 4 (continued)
ILLUSTRATIVE QUESTIONS FROM THE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY
Theme Illustrative Questions/Items Satisfaction with Service Quality
1. National Choice Bank is innovative in finding new and better ways to
meet my needs
2. Compared to other banks I know of, National Choice Bank offers more convenient ways for me to do my banking
Satisfaction with Branch Teller Satisfaction with Bank Branch in General and Facilities
1. How satisfied are you with the service you receive from tellers at the National Choice Bank’s branch you use most often in terms of the tellers’ courtesy and friendliness?
2. How satisfied are you with the service you receive from tellers at the
National Choice Bank’s branch you use most often in terms of the tellers’ ability to resolve your problems quickly?
1. How satisfied are you with the convenience of lobby hours at the
National Choice Bank Branch you use most often?
2. Thinking about the National Choice Bank branch you use most often, how satisfied are you with the overall service you receive
Satisfaction with Personal Bankers Customer Loyalty
1. How satisfied are you with the service you receive from personal bankers at the National Choice Bank’s branch you use most often in terms of giving you individualized, personal attention?
2. How satisfied are you with the service you receive from personal bankers at the National Choice Bank’s branch you use most often in terms of following up on what they say they will do for you?
1. I would recommend National Choice Bank to friends and family
2. The next time I need additional financial services, National Choice
Bank would be my first choice Source: Company files.
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Exhibit 5
NAMES AND DEFINITIONS OF VARIABLES FOR THE NCB DATAFILE
Variable Name Definition
bnum Branch number; numerical variable ranging from 1 to 128
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