Module 5 Assignment

Module 5 Assignment

By: Coleton Ford

Chapter 12

1. What are the trade-offs in choosing a team’s size and level of diversity?

- The amount and diversification of a group of people effect the team’s knowledge resources, and their ability to converse with one another effectively. Bigger and a better mix of people within a team contributes to more knowledge, contacts, and other resources, although there is a negative which can cause some difficulty communicating and people may not get along. The bigger groups can cause some communication barriers in the fact some people may have trouble voicing their opinions to larger groups. The communication within bigger groups has to be straight to the point and formal so people all interpret the same message.

Being able to communicate at the physical level compared to other means offers a better way to transfer information. Having a team be together for a long period of time also helps fade the problems faced by heterogeneous teams. One negative could be the moving to new locations which can cause some individuals to leave their families and friends. Another disadvantages is the cost which can be very expensive and disruptive considering some people may be hard to replace. Virtual teams can be hard to utilize considering the high amount of trust or the exchange of important loads of knowledge. Virtual teams would not work very good in my example of the development project of the locker rooms here at the University of Mary. The need to physically build and watch over the construction site would make a virtual team impossible because the workers and engineers need to be on the site to get the job

Identify one or more circumstances when a company might wish to delay introducing its product.

- One circumstance a company could delay introducing its product could be when they have a well-established product already giving them a good profit and there are no other companies competing with them, therefore there would be no advantage of exposing the new product. Delaying a product could also be seen as a strategy to be the most profitable by releasing it during the buying season like Christmas or black Friday. A company could delay the product until there is a demand as well. All of these are good examples of why a company may choose to delay the new product.

2. What factors will (or should) influence a firm’s pricing strategy?

- The pricing strategy is a way to recoup initial investments, competition with other companies, and the factor that volume will bring down production costs. A company may also look at the benefits to earn profits on their goods when looking at their pricing. A good example of this is my teacher Dr. Fishbeck and his IT consulting business. He offers very low rates due to his competition having better benefits with their size and customer