1. What strategic plans could the college or university at which you are taking this management course adopt to compete for students in the marketplace? Would these plans depend on the school’s goals? (150 words)

2. From the information provided in the chapter example, identify how Western Digital Thailand used both the prevention and the preparation stages of crisis planning.(150 words)

3. Goals that are overly ambitious can discourage employees and decrease motivation, yet the idea of stretch goals is proposed as a way to get people fired up and motivated. As a manager, how might you decide where to draw the line between a “good” stretch goal and a “bad” one that is unrealistic?(150 words)

Inspire Learning Corporation

When the idea first occurred to her, it seemed like such a win-win situation. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Marge Brygay was a hardworking sales rep for Inspire Learning Corporation, a company intent on becoming the top educational software provider in five years. That newly adopted strategic goal translated into an ambitious, million-dollar sales target for each of Inspire’s sales reps. At the beginning of the fiscal year, her share of the sales department’s operational goal seemed entirely reasonable to Marge. She believed in Inspire’s products. The company had developed innovative, highly regarded math, language, science, and social studies programs for the K–12 market. What set the software apart was a foundation in truly cutting-edge research. Marge had seen for herself how Inspire programs could engage whole classrooms of normally unmotivated kids; the significant rise in scores on those increasingly important standardized tests bore out her subjective impressions.

But now, just days before the end of the year, Marge’s sales were $1,000 short of her million-dollar goal. The sale that would have put her comfortably over the top fell through due to last-minute cuts in one large school system’s budget. At first, she was nearly overwhelmed with frustration, but then it occurred to her that if she contributed $1,000 to Central High, the inner-city high school in her territory probably most in need of what she had for sale, they could purchase the software and put her over the top.

Her scheme would certainly benefit Central High students. Achieving her sales goal would make Inspire happy, and it wouldn’t do her any harm, either professionally or financially. Making the goal would earn her a $10,000 bonus check that would come in handy when the time came to write out that first tuition check for her oldest child, who had just been accepted to a well-known, private university.

Initially, it seemed like the perfect solution all the way around. The more she thought about it, however, the more it didn’t quite sit well with her conscience. Time was running out. She needed to decide what to do.

What Would You Do?

1. Donate the $1,000 to Central High, and consider the $10,000 bonus a good return on your investment. (100 words)
2. Accept the fact that you didn’t quite make your sales goal this year. Figure out ways to work smarter next year to increase the odds of achieving your target.(100 words)
3. Don’t make the donation, but investigate whether any other ways are available to help Central High raise the funds that would allow them to purchase the much-needed educational software.(100 words)