BUS625: Data & Decision Analytics Week 3 Response 1

Robert Mcalexander

Good morning everyone,

For this discussion response I will be acting as the new marketing consultant for Orvis. Orvis is a company that operates in the outdoor apparel and gear industry. Their major focus in on high quality fly fishing and upland hunting supplies.  A service that we want to take a harder look at would be our wader repair program. Waders are one of the most important tools of anyone who is involved in fly fishing. They are essentially overall looking covers that protect a user from getting wet when they are in the water.  They come in many forms and each has a very different application.  One of the problems with waders, is that they are thin and can be prone to busted seams, punctures, and tears. What we want to do is somehow extend out all of our warranties for all of waders that will be coming out in 2020. We want our customers to spend more time out on the water, and less time worrying about damaging their gear.  We would take care of the shipping, repair, and replacement of any damaged waders we get back.

Orvis is an industry leader and is constantly needing to improve.  The warranty service will be an online application and once it is complete, the waders will be shipped back to one of our manufacturing plants.  The reason that I am here, is to create a survey.  This will be the first part of the warranty application, and must be filled out in order to go through with the process.  We need to figure out where, when, how, and why the waders were damaged.  This can give us extremely valuable data that our research and development team can use in the future. 

In order to do this we would need to use the concept of stratified random sampling. “A sampling design in which the population is divided into several homogeneous subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then drawn from each stratum.” (Sharpe) So in the brief survey, we will need to ask our customers where they are from, what model wader they purchased, and how it was damaged.  We will offer the customer a list that they can choose from for each question. This will help us to narrow down the variability of responses.

Example: Where did you damage your Waders? A. East B. South C. Central D. West

Example: What is causing leaks?

1. Puncture B. Tear C. Busted Seams D. Other

This will give us several different strata we can look at in order to make a better product.  Being that Orvis is a global brand, this will only be done in the United States in order to make our sample size a bit smaller. It also helps that we are narrowing down our customer base by those who have purchased new waders within the last few months and have then had complications with the.

The only potential worry, especially at first, would be undercoverage.  The waders themselves can last an extremely long time if taken care of properly.  So the majority of our customers that buy new waders will not need to repair them.  It could take the team some time before our survey can begin to gather data.

Sharpe, N. D., De Veaux, R. D., & Velleman, P. F. (2019). Business statistics (4th ed.). Retrieved from:  https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/509177/sp/68046635/mi/291160884?cfi=%2F4%2F2%5BP7001015989000000000000000004C79%5D%2F6%5BP7001015989000000000000000004CB3%5D%2F4%5BP7001015989000000000000000004CB5%5D%2F98%5BP7001015989000000000000000004CFF%5D%2F2%2C%2F1%3A0%2C%2F1%3A0&fi=P7001015989000000000000000004D05

BUSBUS 624 Law & Ethics in the Business Environment Week 3 Response 1

Below there are two of my classmate’s discussion that needs I need to response to their names are James Varughese and Ijeoma Ibekwe

James Varughese

Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Forbes regarding the importance of business ethics and the benefits or positive outcomes that flow from ethical decision making? Explain why or why not.

I agree with Mr. Forbes that business ethics is important and ethical decision making has multiple benefits. Mr. Forbes said it well in simple words, “ethics is right or wrong” it is just “not what you say but what you do”. Businesses must be fair in their dealing with their customers, employees, and society in general. In addition, businesses must demonstrate an emphasis on ethics with their action than mere words or on paper with their mission statement. Business ethics must be the guiding principle at all times and in all aspects of the business like Mr. Forbes said: “A promise made should be a promise kept”. Ethical decisions demonstrate the values and character of a business organization which generate trust and reputation for customer and investors (Hopwood, 2018). Business ethics just not only helps with building reputation but helps develops good business practices like treating employees well which improves employee retention and attracts talent (CharterCollege, 2020). It also keeps businesses away from legal troubles by having environmentally friendly practices and following employment regulation (CharterCollege, 2020).

Provide an example from recent events that either illustrates a positive outcome or benefit to the business that flowed form ethical decision making or an example from recent events that illustrates a negative outcome or detriment to a business that flowed from unethical decision making.

I want to discuss my current employer Ash Grove Cement Company as an example to illustrate a positive outcome of ethical decision making:

· Safety standards: we have a big emphasis on maintaining a safe working environment for all employees. We have a stop the job program which empowers every employee to stop any job for safety concerns or to improve job safety. As an organization, we mean it when we preach Safety first policy. It has helped to develop a different attitude in employees towards safety and our safety program has evolved into an employee-driven safety program which has improved our incident rates.

· Environmental standards: Ash Grove follows strict environmental standards and we are governed by EPA regulations. We have limits on emissions, operators have full authority to shut the whole plant before violating any emission limits and they can shut the plant without any approval. We were recently awarded Energy Star by EPA for efficiently using and saving energy.

· Employee friendly employer: Ash Grove have taken initiative to make the plant employee-friendly. We are located in downtown, to help employees with their commute we have started 4 day work week and flexible hours for all employees. 100% tuition reimbursement is another great program which is helping employees achieve their personal educational goals.

Reference:

Langvardt, A. W., Barnes, A. J., Prenkert, J. D., McCrory, M. A., & Perry, J. E. (2019). Business law: The ethical, global, and e-commerce environment (17th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. Retrieved from https://www.vitalsource.com (Links to an external site.)

CharterCollege. (2020, March 11). chartercollege.edu. Retrieved from Why Are Good Ethics So Important to Businesses: https://www.chartercollege.edu/news-hub/why-are-good-ethics-so-important-businesses (Links to an external site.)

 (Links to an external site.)  (Links to an external site.)Hopwood, S. (2018, January 8). SeanHopwood.com. Retrieved from The Importance of Business Ethics: http://www.seanhopwood.com/blog/leadership-and-management/2018/01/the-importance-of-business-ethics-5107 (Links to an external site.)

Ijeoma Ibekwe

   I agree with Mr. Forbes regarding the importance of business ethics and the benefits or positive outcomes that flow from ethical decision making. The reason that I agree with Mr. Forbes is that Ethics in business is very vital because it creates trust and shows responsibility. For example, as a business leader if you have great morale ethics and you are truthful in your dealings with your employees and your customers, they will go all out for you because they know that they can trust you. No employee wants to have a leader that they cannot trust, and no stakeholder wants to be involved with a company that is not trustworthy and cuts corners. As a result, there are great benefits to having a great morale ethics in business. Those benefits can be seen in the growth and success of a company. Costco is an example of a company that had great success as a result of their ethical decision making regarding the way they treat their employees. Costco is a large retail company that pays their employees above the minimum pay for retail workers and the benefit is seen in their happy employees. Their employees are happy and well taken care of and it shows in the great service that the employees deliver to the customers. And hence the success of Costco as a company.

    An example from a recent event that illustrates a negative outcome or detriment to a business that flowed from unethical decision making was seen when the CEO /Chairman of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance was charged “over allegations that he failed to disclose close to $80 million in additional compensation for 2010 to 2018 (B.Atkins; 2019). In addition, according to the article written by Betsy Atkins in “Business Ethics and Integrity” the compensations were hidden with deferral schemes as well as personal investment losses he managed to transfer to Nissan in 2008 (B.Atkins; 2019)

REFERENCE:

B.Atkins; (Feb 7, 2019). Business Ethics and Integrity: It Starts With The Tone At The Top. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/betsyatkins/2019/02/07/business-ethics-and-integrity-it-starts-with-the-tone-at-the-top/#36ef40f157c6