Assignment C Group Assignment

On November 15, your group will have 25 minutes to present your findings and recommendation to the question posed to you by your corporate board (as posted below). Following your presentation, we will have 5 minutes of Q & A. The entire 30 minutes will be digitally recorded for my review and yours. Our session on Oct. 25 will be primarily devoted to executive speaking skills; the criteria explained at that session will guide my evaluation of your group presentation. In the meantime, Chapter 4 in your Management Communication textbook will help you brush up on concepts and best practices for oral presentations.

Rules of the road:

1. All members of the group must present for approximately the same amount of time. (Obviously I'm not checking with a stop watch; I just want each member to be an active participant in the delivery of the presentation.)

2. While you are welcome to use PowerPoint or other speaking aid, I want the main focus of the presentation to be on you, not on a screen. Please consult with me prior to your presentation if you have questions about this point.

3. Corporate casual dress is fine for this occasion. I recognize that you would dress more formally for an actual board presentation.

4. I am certainly open to your refinement of your topic. Please communicate any changes you wish to make by email (bell@usfca.edu); I will get back to promptly. You may make whatever assumptions you wish about the nature and circumstances of your hypothetical company in addressing the questions below.


Teams and Topics (speaking order of teams to be decided by a draw of straws on Oct. 25)

Team A Question from your board: "What background information should we know about romance in the workplace and
what policies do you recommend?"
Lisa Marie
Jason
Anthony
Nicholas

Team B Question from your board: "As a company seeking to develop new technologies for marketing to consumers,
what is the current state of interactive television for consumer sales and what must we do to become a
technology leader in that space? What has prevented the widespread use of interactive television for consumer
sales to date?"
Cortney
Bruno
Chris
Michael

Team C Question from your board: "We have emphasized employee honesty and integrity in our corporate
values statement. What is the current status of honesty testing from a legal perspective and from the
point of view of its validation across industries? Do you recommend that we install a system of
honesty testing in our company, beginning in the hiring process? What costs, benefits, and possible pitfalls
might be involved?"
Sarah
Joseph
Allan
Eugene

Team D Question from your board: "Bring us up to date on best practices for effective, legally defensible employment
hiring. Specifically, what is behavior structured interviewing and should we be doing it? If so, at what levels within our organization? Give us a roadmap to take us from our present "old-style" interviewing procedures to
whatever interviewing practices you recommend for the selection process."
Alan
Mary
Sean
Clark

Team E Question from your board: "We are frankly befuddled by the current status of affirmative action hiring and
promotion. What standards should guide us with regard to ethnic diversity in our workforce (approximately
4500 based in Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Seattle). Give us a specific list of do's and don'ts to
keep us on the right and legal side of this difficult issue."
Gil
Annabelle
Jeff
Duke

Team F Question from your board: "We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars providing in-depth training for
all our employees with regard to sexual harassment in the workplace. But now we understand that lawyers
are winning big settlements from companies such as ours for verbal abuse directed toward members of
EEOC-protected groups. What do we need to know about verbal abuse as a board and what kind of
training program do you recommend to ensure that our managers don't embroil us in legal problems based
on their verbal interactions with co-workers?"
Kelley
Jeremy
Anees
Tracy

Team G Question from your board: "We are debating whether to monitor the flow of email and downloads to hard-drives on
company-owned computers with an eye toward protecting the company against actionable violations of various
kinds. What can you tell us about electronic oversight and monitoring of hard drives as well as incoming and outgoing email
messages across industries? Is this practice as common as the routine monitoring of business phone conversations in many companies? After explaining the pros and cons of email and hard drive monitoring, make a recommendation for our company of 3500 employees in the chip technology sector, with significant defense contracting."
Emily
Carl
George
Kim
Sasha