I guess he’s gone – haven’t heard a peep from him since last week – I’m mjust just *crushed* that he left witout saying Good-bye! After all the lively conversations, strong personal relationship he had developed with everyone and words of wisdom he added to the discussions ….
I am curious what he was evaluating or looking for.
I posted my stuff already and so have several other people and it all looks similar to mine, basically the same length and same level of detail so I guess I’m not missing anything.
Do you think they just couldn’t think of anything else for assignments and decided to stretch this one into a 3 week project LOL It’s the only explanation I can think of.
This is from the discussion about conflicting goals and pretty much confirms what I always thought about many customer service positions:
“I worked in the customer service department, but our department did more than just attend to customers’ needs. We also were taught how to re-sell the products that the sales team had lost, and we had our own sales quotas to meet.”
So it’s not really customer service as much as a second chance to pressure the customer into buying something … as everyone who has ever been on hold with most credit card/cable/phone/computer company probably knows.
Even though I don’t like doing diagrams, I’m slightly happy we have to do this one. Way back in Class 2 or 3, we had to do mind maps (worthless exercise) and I bought a very cool graphics program called SmartDraw that did mind maps and a ton of other chart types. It made amazing mind maps LOL And now, it made a very nice looking cause and effect diagram LOL It was expensive (about $300) but much easier than doing it in word or publisher. Sort of nice to put it to use again.
As a fiction writer, I know my ‘tells’, I know my habits, I know my writing quirks such as using names over and over again if I’m not careful, my characters love food and there is always ‘eating’ in my stories, they laugh a lot during sex, and I have favorite ‘phrases’ that crop up often
I find I have similar quirks now at school LOL
‘organizational culture’ comments is always referenced to Colquitt, J. A., Lepine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2011). Organizational behavior: Improving performance and commitment in the workplace (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill;
Personal motivation is always referenced to Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
And, of course, the benefits of critical thinking is wonderful Elder & Paul, 2008 ( Elder, L., & Paul, R. (2008). The thinker’s guide to the nature and functions of critical & creative thinking. Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking Press) LOL
I just know what I’m going to say in certain cases, know the in-paper references by heart (and c&p the full reference) and know I can always count on these stand by references to sort of pad out my paper or reference list if it looks a tad short.
I guess everyone does that, right? Certainly, no one at Walden seems to care and it’s counted for ‘outside’ or ‘additional’ research
Kind of weird to me – it’s not due really until next week – Week 7 – but a draft is due by Day 7 (Sunday) of this week, then we all have to do two replies/comments on people’s drafts by middle of next week and then post the final in Week 8. So, you’d think this would be a long paper maybe or something kind of involved, right?
Nope – not at all. It makes me wonder if I’m missing something LOL
One of our resources highlights different companies who went through rough patches and either recovered or didn’t recover. We’re to pick one of those companies, briefly describe what happened to cause the problems/decline, the outcome (company failed, company recovered) and then do a simple cause and effect diagram to explain it.
I’ve gone over the instructions twice now and it says “briefly describe” so I’m guessing it’s OK my paper is only a page LOL This is another situation where actually being in class would help because then you could bounce length and concerns off other people easily and see what they say.
Hey! What do you know – a discussion that is actually useful to the real world and something that managers might actually have to deal with: examining how to handle the situation where ‘local goals’ conflict with broader goals, ie – how to handle it when something like a department or manager’s own personal goals go against the organization’s goals. I know I see this often enough in my job and it’s certainly something that happens in all or at least most offices.
It just raises the question – why can’t all the discussions be like this? Something that people actually run into, no matter what they do or what size company they work for or will work for.
So I picked Objective #2 but 9 other people picked objective #1 – doing the same thing they had done for the other weeks. The great thing meant that I could actually follow the directions and answer two people who did different objectives but it made me wonder why really no one else did that. Did they not actually see S’s comment? They didn’t actually read the assignment (not that I did either initially) and clearly the prof isn’t taking off for not following these directions, especially now that it’s been pointed out.
For Week 3, him not taking off for it or EVEN mentioning it I was willing to brush off as lack of attention to detail – like mine, really – but now? I have to assume he doesn’t care or Walden doesn’t care.
That’s actually kind of sad. I know grading is really lax – I mean, it’s Week 5 so I’ve been graded on roughly 8 assignments now (2 discussions and 2 assignments) and I’ve lost a grand total of 3 points – each discussion is worth 50 pointes, each assignment is worth 75.
I wish I knew what other people were getting.
So this was really a back and forth with someone over one of the Velocity quotes I selected to illustrate ‘ethics’ – my favorite head butting against wall Walden topic:
“So the candy case was always stocked, Amy’s grandpa always had a sale of some sort from everyone every week, the wholesaler forgot about his ironclad rule, and everybody lived happily ever after…”
The above quote was taken from a paragraph of an example of a good business practice (the grandfather was selling candy by the piece instead of by the case, as the whole seller wanted) and something that Amy was proud of and as proof as how ‘ethical’ her grandfather was – for helping people buy candy during the depression, I assume. I pointed out that it could be viewed from another POV as the grandfather breaking his contract with the whole seller, potentially stealing from the company, and may have caused harm to the whole seller (unsold inventory, wasted product, less money, upset other vendors over this one being treated ‘special’, etc.). The ‘everyone lived happily ever after’ is only one POV.
FINALLY someone said that I made an interesting point and that Yes – they had always viewed ethics from their POV but they could see how, from the whole seller’s POV, the grandfather’s actions might have been highly unethical.
For seven or eight classes now, I’ve been beating my head against the wall that ethics is NEUTRAL – neither good, nor bad … and finally in Class 9, someone else gets that.
The prof remained quiet.
For this week’s discussion, I’m forced to laugh again at Walden’s wording of questions:
•Provide a rationale for whether or not you would advise the use of throughput accounting for all decisions within an organization.
ALL decisions? Is there ANY business model in existence that should be ever used for all decisions? Maybe one that is focused on something like – Never knowingly break the law – but even that couldn’t necessarily be applied to all companies, all the time … if you’re a company that relies on transportation, can you honestly except your drivers to NEVER speed or do you just expect them to keep it within 5 miles of the speed limit, never through school zones, etc.
We get questions like this often where it’s ‘all the time’ or ‘always use’ and to me, the world – the business world – is never that black and white. That’s especially true when you’re suppose to be an international school like Walden and should respect multiple business cultures and corporate expectations.
Swimming at Walden University 