PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS, I MUST COMPLETE A PEER REVIEW ON THE BELOW. Thanks Please demonstrate critical thinking abilities. No fewer than 100 words for post. For this response, should outside sources be used to support the content within the postings, proper in-text citations and correctly formatted references should be prepared consistent with the APA (6th edition). The list of references should be physically positioned at the end of the postings. 1.Compare/contrast the essential differences between the best-fit and best-practices perspectives. How do these perspectives impact an organization’s competitive advantage? In order for organizations to remain competitive or ahead of the rest of the industry they must stay innovative and acquire the talent that will allow for this. HR is given the task to align talent with the organizations goals using a strategic approach. Organizations use reward systems in order to attract and retain the talent it needs. “This is definitely going to add to the competitive advantage of the organization. The reward system includes, bonuses, additional time off, increased pay and many other innovative practices been practiced by the HR department for the staff members who have excelled in their work falling in their specific domain” (Upadhye, 2016). There are two strategic perspectives used which are “Best Fit” and “Best Practice”.“One model “best fit” argues that HR strategy will be more effective when it is appropriately integrated with its specific organizational and environmental context” (Boxall & Purcell, 2000). This means that the reward system it utilizes is customized to fit the organizations policies and strategies. “Best Practices argues that universalism is best for all organizations regardless of its strategy. “It believes that a bunch of HR practices certainly including the reward system ropes Organizational business strategy. This in turn leads to highly committed and motivated employees leading to enhanced competitive advantage” (Upadhye, 2016). Best Fit supports the view that the employees tend to work with a firm that tends to recognize and reward the performers. If the organization offers incentives and additional perks that its competitors do not along with the basic salary, it will have a better opportunity to attract quality employees. The reward system should be able to differentiate between the good performers and the bad ones. The reward system should be such that it makes an arrangement to encourage the good performers and assist the way out for the poor ones, giving the organization a competitive advantage. (Upadhye, 2016). References Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2000, June). Strategic human resource management: where have we come form and where should we be going? International Journal of Management Reviews, 2(2), 183-203. Retrieved June 6, 2017, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.pegleg.park.edu/eds/pdf... Upadhye, N. (2016, June). Strategic Reward System- Analyzing the gap between "Best Fit" and "Best Practice". INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR EMERGING TRENDS IN ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT RESEARCH, II(II), 1-5. Retrieved June 6, 2017, from http://www.ijetemr.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/...

Please read the Yahoo case below and briefly answer the following two questions: 1). Which performance management system should Yahoo use? 2). What are some potential contamination, rater errors, or biases? A Yahoo Employee-Ranking System Favored by Marissa Mayer Is Challenged in Court By VINDU GOEL FEB. 1, 2016, New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — One of Marissa Mayer’s signature policies as chief executive of Yahoo has been the quarterly performance review, in which every employee at the company is ranked on a scale of 1 to 5. The ratings have been used to fire hundreds of employees since Ms. Mayer joined the company in mid-2012. Now, as Ms. Mayer prepares to announce a streamlining plan on Tuesday that is likely to involve even more job cuts, one former manager who lost his job is challenging the entire system as discriminatory and a violation of federal and California laws governing mass layoffs. In a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, Gregory Anderson, an editor who oversaw Yahoo’s autos, homes, shopping, small business and travel sites in Sunnyvale, Calif., until he was fired in November 2014, alleges that the company’s senior managers routinely manipulated the rating system to fire hundreds of people without just cause to achieve the company’s financial goals. Mr. Anderson said the cuts, including what his boss said was the firing of about 600 other low-performing Yahoo employees at the time of his termination, amounted to illegal mass layoffs. Under California law, the layoff of more than 50 employees within 30 days at a single location like Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters requires an employer to give workers 60 days of advance notice. A similar federal law, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, requires advance notice for a layoff of 500 or more employees. Yahoo has never provided such notices. But it did cut 1,100 employees over a period of months in late 2014 and early 2015, ostensibly for performance reasons. If the court finds that Yahoo violated either law, it could be forced to pay each affected employee $500 a day plus back pay and benefits for each day of advance notice it failed to provide. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing is also investigating the use of ratings in the firing of another Yahoo employee, according to Jon R. Parsons, Mr. Anderson’s lawyer. Fahizah Alim, a spokeswoman for the California agency, confirmed that such an inquiry was underway, but said she could not provide further information because of confidentiality rules. In a statement, Yahoo defended its rating system. "Our performance review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out," the company said. Yahoo also said that Mr. Anderson’s specific claims had no merit and that he had sought a $5 million settlement from the company just before filing the suit. Ms. Mayer has steadfastly refused to use the word “layoff” to describe the thousands of jobs eliminated since she joined the company. She even forbade her managers from uttering what she called “the L-word,” instructing them to use the term “remix” instead. The lawsuit comes as Yahoo morale hits new lows. More than one-third of the company’s work force has left voluntarily or involuntarily over the last year. Ms. Mayer, who has presided over a continued decline in Yahoo’s financial performance, faces pressure from activist investors to sell the company’s Internet businesses or otherwise radically restructure the business. She has promised to unveil a new strategy on Tuesday, when Yahoo reports its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2015, although people with knowledge of her thinking say that the changes she will announce will be modest. Mr. Anderson’s suit provides a peek inside Yahoo’s controversial quarterly performance review system, which Ms. Mayer adopted on the recommendation of McKinsey & Company, a management consulting company. Similar systems were once widely used in corporate America, and companies like Amazon.com still employ analogous methods. But others, like General Electric and Microsoft, have dropped such rankings as a tool for routine firings because of their corrosive effect on productivity and employee morale. At Yahoo, the program, known internally as Q.P.R., has been a sore spot among managers and employees since it began. The court filing said that managers were forced to give poor rankings to a certain percentage of their team, regardless of actual performance. Ratings given by front-line managers were arbitrarily changed by higher-level executives who often had no direct knowledge of the employee’s work. And employees were never told their exact rating and had no effective avenue of appeal. “The Q.P.R. process was opaque and the employees did not know who was making the final decisions, what numbers were being assigned by whom along the way, or why those numbers were being changed,” the lawsuit says. “This manipulation of the Q.P.R. process permitted employment decisions, including terminations, to be made on the basis of personal biases and stereotyping.” Mr. Anderson said that in his case, he had received high ratings and a promotion before taking a leave of absence in the summer of 2014 to study at the University of Michigan on a Knight-Wallace Fellowship. Although the fellowship leave was approved by two top Yahoo executives, Kathy Savitt and Jackie Reses, who have since left the company, Mr. Anderson said that his boss’s boss, Megan Liberman, called him on Nov. 10 to inform him that he was in the bottom 5 percent of the company’s work force, all of whom were being fired. In the suit, Mr. Anderson said he was fired for several reasons unrelated to performance. He said he had complained to management about the impact of the Q.P.R. process on the people he supervised and had reported an attempted bribe by one employee who wanted him to reduce another employee’s rating. He also alleged gender discrimination, claiming that the media group, which was overseen by Ms. Savitt and Ms. Liberman, systematically favored women in hiring, promotions and layoffs. Mr. Anderson, who had worked at Yahoo’s headquarters, said he was “stranded” in Michigan with his family because of the firing. Please read the case below and briefly answer the following two questions: 1. Do you predict that the forced distribution will increase customer satisfaction? Why or why not? 2. Which performance measure do you recommend? Reliable Underwriters (Stewart & Brown, 2014, Chapter 8, p.324) Reliable Underwriters is a risk management firm that provides insurance services to large organizations. Part of its operation is a claims-processing center that employs 156 clerical workers. These workers interact with clients to answer questions and provide information about the status of claims. Reliable has a corporate objective of obtaining the highest possible customer satisfaction ratings. However, recent customer satisfaction surveys suggest that some of the clerical workers are not adequately meeting clients’ needs. As part of an initiative to increase customer satisfaction, the management team of the claims processing center has decided to change the performance appraisal process. In the past, ratings have been made on a 5-point scale. A score of 5 represented outstanding performance, a score of 1 represented unacceptable performance, and a score of 3 represented average performance. Last year, 135 employees received a score of 4. Only 3 received a score of 5, and only 2 received the lowest rating. Since almost everyone receives the same rating, employees in the claims-processing center have little concern about being evaluated. For the most part, they see performance appraisal simply as a nuisance. However, the newly proposed process will create major changes. The main change will be the use of a forced distribution. Each supervisor must rate at least 20 percent of employees as outstanding and at least 10 percent as unacceptable. This forced distribution is expected to clearly identify top performers. Low performers will also be identified and encouraged to either improve or seek employment elsewhere.

assigned readingsLearning Objectives:After studying this chapter, you should be able to:Explain how predictive analytics can help in business strategy formulation.Distinguish structured from unstructured data.Differentiate units of observation.Outline a data-generating process.Describe the primary ways that data analysis is used to aid business performance.Discriminate between lead and lag information.Discriminate between active and passive prediction.Recognize questions pertaining to business strategy that may utilize (active) predictive analytics.Actual assignment Activity 1Attached Files: Sales and Costs.xlsx (19.58 KB)Activity I - A manager claims that increases in advertising expenditure will surely raise the firm's profits, citing his sense that people find the firm's ads entertaining. Sketch how you might refute this claim using:A theoretical argumentDataWhy might the refutation using data be more convincing?Activity II - A grocery store manager is interested in the data-generating process for her store's weekly soda sales. She believes factors impacting these sales include price, product placement, and whether the week contains a holiday. Write out a formal representation of the data-generation process for weekly soda sales that incorporates these and additional factors.Activity III - Access the dataset Sales and Costs.xlsx (See the attached) and answer the following questions.Calculate these descriptive statistics.Mean of salesVariance of materials costsCovariance of labor costs and materials costsMean of labor costsTotal salesCalculate at least two more descriptive statistics for this dataset.