Total quality management and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Federal RetirementsThe Government Accounting Office (GAO), Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in May of 2019 published the Federal Retirement: OPM Actions Needed to Improve Application Processing Times. OPM has a goal of processing most retirement application in 60 days, but for several years has not met that standard. The GAO OPM for that reason, studied the process for federal retirement processing to determine root causes of delays, and to determine what strategies should be employed to remedy the situation. The results of that study are available at the following website: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/699120.pdf (Links to an external site.)While the document provides root cause analysis and recommends six opportunities for improvements, it offers no quality management plan. You have been contracted to develop a quality management plan, and you will report to the Comptroller General of the United States, the director of the Government Accountability Office. The GAO is a legislative branch agency established by Congress in 1921 to ensure the fiscal and managerial accountability of the federal government. If your quality management plan is acceptable, the Comptroller General of the United States will support your company for project managing the implementation of funded improvements. This could be a long and lucrative contract for your company.Note: While the document at the core of this assignment is an actual document published by The Government Accounting Office, the quality management scenario described is fictional and only for the educational purpose of showing mastery of the course objectives set forth for this course.In Module 3, you were asked as a first step, to familiarize yourself with the Federal Retirement: OPM Actions Needed to Improve Application Processing Times document, hereafter called the GAO report. After your review of the guidelines, you were asked to provide your input to the following:Is the current Federal Retirement: OPM Actions Needed to Improve Application Processing Times document one that promotes high quality? If yes, how? If no, why not and what should change to promote quality? Support your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation.What do you interpret to be meant by "quality" from the perspective of the GAO OPM, retirees, Congressional leaders, and the public both now and in the future? What support do you have for your position with current (published in the past five years) scholarly documentation?What are the drivers for change, and the barriers to change from the perspective of the GAO OPM, retirees, Congressional leaders, and the public? Are there competing drivers for change that may impact quality from the public's perspective? Support your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation.In Module 8, you are asked to build upon your work from Module 3 and show additional mastery through other course modules.Provide the following quality management plan in your final portfolio:Provide an opening paragraph which describes the importance of the using this case to show your mastery of course objectives, and mapping of what is contained in your paper to prove that mastery.Delineate your next section with a header, and in less than one page, describe the current situation with federal retirement processing, the recommendations from the GAO study, and the role of the GAO OPM in promoting quality.Delineate your next section using headers and sub-headers with your work from Module 3. Include any updates that you wish to make as a result of learning more about quality management, and input from your instructor in Module 3 for the following: Is the current Federal Retirement: OPM Actions Needed to Improve Application Processing Times document one that promotes high quality? If yes, how? If no, why not and what should change to promote quality? Support your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation.What do you interpret to be meant by "quality" from the perspective of the GAO OPM, retirees, Congressional leaders, and the public both now and in the future? What support do you have for your position with specific references to scholarly (peer-reviewed) resources?What are the drivers for change, and the barriers to change from the perspective of the GAO OPM, retirees, Congressional leaders, and the public? Are there competing drivers for change that may impact quality from the public's perspective? Support your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation.Delineate your next section with a header to discuss the operational issues that must be managed and controlled to support quality including partnering and strategic alliances if any are pertinent. How will those issues be managed and controlled in your plan? As usual, what support do you have for your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation?Delineate your next section with a header to discuss the human resource issues that must be managed and controlled to support quality including employee empowerment, teamwork, education and training. How will those issues be managed and controlled in your plan? As usual, what support do you have for your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation?Delineate your next section with a header to discuss customer satisfaction and how it will be measured. How will and when will measurement happen in your plan? As usual, what support do you have for your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation?Delineate your next section with a header to discuss how problems will be solved, conflicts resolved, and how decisions will be made especially any interagency issues, or legislative issues that may arise. As usual, what support do you have for your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation?Delineate your next section with a header to discuss what quality tools should be used, when and how, including communications tools, process control tools, benchmarking, or other tools as you find appropriate. What support do you have for your position with specific references to the GAO report or current scholarly documentation?Finally, conclude with the final section making a recommendation to the Comptroller General of the United States for your plans, and why your company is in the best position to lead the quality management effort going forward through implementation.Submission:Write a paper addressing the case of federal employee retirement processing regarding the GAO OPM report and quality management. Your paper should be 8-10 pages in length, not including the required title and references pages and any appendix if required. For more information see "How do I do an Appendix in APA style?" (Links to an external site.)Support the paper with a minimum of six current (published in the most recent five years) scholarly sources from the CSU Global Library. This is in addition to any course textbooks, lecture material you decide to use, or the case itself. Of course, you may always exceed the minimum number of sources.Format the paper according to the CSU Global Writing Center (Links to an external site.).Be clear, concise, and focused.Tip: Cases may be addressed in 6 steps:Read the assignment and questions provided to get an idea of the important course concepts to be covered. There is plenty of material in a case that may be immaterial to the course learning objectives. (For example, a case may have significant information on staff acknowledgements, but the assignment questions relate to quality management. In that case, do not spend time on those acknowledgements unless relevant to quality management. Use your time searching the case, researching and reporting on quality management.)Read and take notes on the entire case. Read every figure and table to thoroughly understand them.Determine who are the key players; what are the key issues; what is the problem to be solved?Do the research and analyze any data. Use the CSU Global library to research the key issues and problems. Find current academic information on those topics.Make your decisions relative to the important course concepts, and document the defense of your position by melding the scholarly research and examples from the case. Remember, no opinions; only facts.Finalize your portfolio by checking all assignment questions are fully answered, rubric items are met, and the document follows CSU Global Guide to Writing and APA requirements.

Question 1 The attached file contains hypothetical data for working this problem. Goodman Corporation’s and Landry Incorporated’s stock prices and dividends, along with the Market Index, are shown in the file. Stock prices are reported for December 31 of each year, and dividends reflect those paid during the year. The market data are adjusted to include dividends. Use the data given to calculate annual returns for Goodman, Landry, and the Market Index, and then calculate average returns over the five-year period.  (Hint: Remember, returns are calculated by subtracting the beginning price from the ending price to get the capital gain or loss, adding the dividend to the capital gain or loss, and dividing the result by the beginning price. Assume that dividends are already included in the index.   Also, you cannot calculate the rate of return for 2015 because you do not have 2014 data.) Calculate the standard deviation of the returns for Goodman, Landry, and the Market Index.  (Hint:  Use the sample standard deviation formula given in the chapter, which corresponds to the STDEV function in Excel.)  On a stand-alone basis which corporation is the least risky? Construct a scatter diagram graph that shows Goodman’s and Landry’ returns on the vertical axis and the Market Index’s returns on the horizontal axis.  Estimate Goodman’s and Landry’s betas as the slopes of regression lines with stock returns on the vertical axis (y-axis) and market return on the horizontal axis (x-axis).  (Hint: use Excel’s SLOPE function.)  Are these betas consistent with your graph? The risk-free rate on long-term Treasury bonds is 8.04%.  Assume that the market risk premium is 6%.  What is the expected return on the market?  Now use the SML equation to calculate the two companies' required returns. If you formed a portfolio that consisted of 60% Goodman stock and 40% Landry stock, what would be its beta and its required return? Suppose an investor wants to include Goodman Industries’ stock in his or her portfolio.  Stocks A, B, and C are currently in the portfolio, and their betas are 0.769, 0.985, and 1.423, respectively.  Calculate the new portfolio’s required return if it consists of 30% of Goodman, 20% of Stock A, 30% of Stock B, and 20% of Stock C. Question 2 Quest Financial services balance sheets report $200 million in total debt, $100 million in short-term investments, and $30 million in preferred stock. Quest has 10 million shares of common stock outstanding. A financial analyst estimated that Quest’s value of operations is $1000 million. What is the analyst’s estimate of the intrinsic stock price per share? Question 3 Lincoln Incorporated is expected to pay a $4.5 per share dividend at the end of this year (i.e., D1 = $4.50). The dividend is expected to grow at a constant rate of 5% a year. The required rate of return on the stock is, rs, is 12%. What is the estimated value per share of Boehm stock? Question 4 Assume that the average firm in Masters Corporation’s industry is expected to grow at a constant rate of 3% and that its dividend yield is 5%. Masters is about as risky as the average firm in the industry and just paid a dividend (D0) of $2.5. Analysts expect that the growth rate of dividends will be 25% during the first year (g0,1 = 25%) and 10% during the second year (g1,2 = 10%). After Year 2, dividend growth will be constant at 5%. What is the required rate of return on Masters’s stock? What is the estimated intrinsic per share? Question 5 Several years ago, Macro Riders issued preferred stock with a stated annual dividend of 5% of its $600 par value. Preferred stock of this type currently yields 10%. Assume dividends are paid annually. a. What is the estimated value of Macro’s preferred stock? b. Suppose interest rate levels have risen to the point where the preferred stock now yields 14%. What would be the new estimated value of Macro’s preferred stock? Question 6 1. Define each of the following terms: Call option Put option Strike price or exercise price Expiration date Exercise value Option price Time value Writing an option Covered option Naked option In-the-money call Out-of-the-money call LEAPS 2. The current price of a stock is $50. In 1 year, the price will be either $65 or $35. The annual risk-free rate is 10%. Find the price of a call option on the stock that has an exercise price of $55 and that expires in 1 year. (Hint: Use daily compounding.) 3. The exercise price on one of Chrisardan Company’s call options is $20, its exercise value is $27, and its time value is $8. What are the option’s market value and the price of the stock?

Organizations periodically need to create a new position. The need for this new position might be due to:Changes in the market/industryCreating an internal position for work that had previously been outsourcedOrganizational growth that necessitates the addition of a new specialty or managerial positionYou serve as the Human Resource Manager for an auto insurance company called Premium Auto Insurance. Up until this point, the Claims Department has consisted of a small number of Claims Representatives who reported directly to the Finance Director.Claims volume has recently jumped, resulting in the hiring of more Claims Representatives. You, as the Human Resource Manager, feel that a new position of Claims Supervisor is needed in order to manage the expanding claims operation.You have decided to develop a proposal that you will submit to the CEO recommending the creation of this new position and providing the justification.Conduct academic research using the library's databases, like Business Source Complete via EBSCO and Business via ProQuest, as well as reliable webpages and in a minimum of 2 pages, create a proposal. In your proposal, include the following:A description of the new position you will be creating with a list of the main responsibilities of the position.Explain how this new position could benefit the company in at least three ways.Describe how this position will work collaboratively with other positions in the company.Remember that this is a proposal. Make sure to format your paper properly for your proposal. A proposal is a persuasive document, so make sure to use proper language and tone. Remember, you are the HR Manager and you are writing to the CEO so use a tone in your proposal that is specific to your audience (the CEO).Include an APA formatted title page and reference page with at least 2 credible sources. Make sure to include APA in-text citations for any information used from outside sources.