In What Is Art? Leo Tolstoy wrote that one of the chief criteria in judging art is how powerfully the art transmits the feelings of the author to us. If art is “infectious,” if it gets under our skin and moves us to think or act differently or perhaps to create our own art, then that art has proven successful. In Tolstoy’s own words, “The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art.”
When watching a play live, this infection can be extremely powerful. The performers are physically near us and appeal or repel us in immediate ways. We respond to the story and to the voices and to the grandeur of the stage. And we respond in deeply felt ways to the truth presented and what it suggests about our life in this fallen world longing for grace.
Have you ever had this type of powerful experience watching a play? What about the play got under your skin, and how were you changed by the experience? Read Philippians 4:8-9. Given the unique power of dramatic art, do we have a special challenge as Christians both performing in theater and watching it?
If Theater has not had this effect on you, what form of art has? Talk about how you have been infected by that art in specific ways, and why you have been so affected, and what the result has been. Then tie that to the passage from the letter to the Philippians.
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.
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Área de Materiales PAD, Universidad De Piura (PAD) until Jul 2022. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
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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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Aaron S. Fogleman wrote From slaves, convicts and servants to free passengers in which he described colonial labor. Using your textbook, as well as the assigned readings, do the following in a paper:
Explain the growth of the slave labor system in the American colonies.
Explain whether some colonies were more reliant on slave labor than others, and if so, why that was.
Explain how this affected their development. Be sure to address changes in the colonial slave labor system after 1619, as well as the transition from an indentured servitude labor system to a slave system.
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Times have certainly changed since Michele Dickey wrote “Girl Gamers: The controversy of Girl Gamers and the Relevance of Female-Oriented Game Design for Instruction Design”. Not only has the gaming industry pivoted from a male-dominated console-based world to a world in which mobile games with wide audiences reign supreme, but we now have games like Pokemon Go, which lets you assign your character a “style” instead of a gender.
For this assignment, I would like you to discuss how games have changed from the time “Girl Gamers” was written and today. Please focus on representations of race and gender in games, and elements in games that have become more mass appeal and less white-male-specific. Please use examples from our reading and from modern media to support your thoughts and ideas.
Times have certainly changed since Michele Dickey wrote “Girl Gamers: The controversy of Girl Gamers and the Relevance of Female-Oriented Game Design for Instruction Design”. Not only has the gaming industry pivoted from a male-dominated console-based world to a world in which mobile games with wide audiences reign supreme, but we now have games like Pokemon Go, which lets you assign your character a “style” instead of a gender.
For this assignment, I would like you to discuss how games have changed from the time “Girl Gamers” was written and today. Please focus on representations of race and gender in games, and elements in games that have become more mass appeal and less white-male-specific. Please use examples from our reading and from modern media to support your thoughts and ideas.