DQ questions

1. HR Management

•  I had a student a couple of years ago that said she lied on a resume to get a position because she was a single parent who had just lost her job and was struggling to make ends meet to care for her children.  The job required someone who had “extensive” experience as a supervisor and proficiency in operating two important pieces of equipment that the employees she would be supervising used on a daily basis.  The student had never been a supervisor and felt that she knew enough of the basics of those pieces of equipment to get by.  Three weeks after starting, she made an error on one of the machines she claimed she said she was proficient in using that resulted in an employee being injured and having to miss work for two weeks.  What are your thoughts on resumes and job applications regarding telling “little white lies”?  Is it OK to do so when applying for a job?  Why or why not?  
• No question that technology is changing almost daily and we are a society that values keeping up. Do you feel that there are times when technology detracts from personal relationships either in the workplace or at home? Why or why not? Please provide examples.

1. Priniciples of Microeconomics

• Discuss why an individual firm might deliberately market a set of products that compete with each other. Provide examples of this and explain why the strategy worked or did not.
• Based on the economic concepts of opportunity costs and the profit motive (defined broadly as the desire to become better off through our choices), how should your limited resources of time and energy be allocated between market work, nonmarket work, and leisure? Provide examples.

1. Innovative Business Decision

• Within a work setting, explain three factors that contribute to achieving creative thinking. Explain the differences between creative thinking and critical thinking. Which type of thinking do you believe is more critical to success, and why?
• Think back to a time when you were on a team that was designed to be innovative. Based on information in this unit, were the individuals on the team suited for the team? How did the leader motivate everyone?

1. Organizational Theory & Behavior

• Within the Unit V Podcast, Chantell, Dayna, and Robert discuss what their experiences have taught them in regard to communication. Robert also mentioned that he read books that gave him ideas for communication strategies. Do you believe that reviewing industry materials, such as books, podcasts, and/or videos, are essential to running an effective business? Why, or why not?
• Do you believe that companies should avoid conflict? Why, or why not? Include an example from your experiences or observations as a part of your response.

1. Project Management

• Consider a project to build an amusement park. What are some of the resource constraints that would make this project challenging? What could you do, as a project manager, to help manage the constraints and project scheduling?
• Choose one of the following projects:
  • a project to build a hotel in Japan,
  • a project to build a new prototype for an electric car, or
  • an IT project to create a new internal accounting software system.

As a project manager, what are some of the specific cost estimation problems you might encounter? Considering those potential problems, what could you do to help ensure accurate cost estimation?