MGT575 Section I Worksheet: Organizational Problem
Name: Harvey (Gene) Rustman
Your degree program: MS – Management
Section I - Organizational Problem or Opportunity
Complete this worksheet.
Then
Write in a clear and concise style: Complete Section I of the Portfolio Project using the content
from this worksheet.
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Ensure that transitions between sub-sections promote understanding and clarity.
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Give credit to all sources and cite in errorless APA formatting.
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Write in a clear and concise academic style.
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Provide a logic flow with no gaps or extraneous content.
1. Software Piracy: The Growing Global Problem
Software Piracy is a major problem in this digital age. As the President and CEO of
Onimous Corporation a business software and gaming software production corporation located in
Kansas City Missouri I deal with this problem daily. In 2014, 28% of our total annual revenue to
combat and take legal action against those that were committing piracy by stealing our software
and games. This piracy issue is not just within my company this issue is throughout the software,
music, and video industries. In a study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in 2012 57% of
the world’s computer users admit to software piracy. In the United States 20% admit to it with
many wishing to not comment (Fitzgerald, 2012). This theft in 2012 amounted to approximately
$63.4 billion which is more than the total online retail sales for the holidays in 2011(Lunden,
2014).
Piracy is obviously not just a United States issue. In a report by Jon Brodkin (2011) titled
“Ballmer to Hu: 90% of Microsoft customers in China using pirated software” only 1 person out
of every 10 paid for their Microsoft product. The article explains that in a meeting with United
States President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and
other business leaders President Barack Obama stated:
"We're making progress on making sure that the government procurement process
in China is open and fair to American businesses. And we've made progress as a
consequence of this state visit.
Some of it has to do with intellectual property protection. So we were just in a
meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their
estimate is that only 1 customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in
China. And so can we get better enforcement, since that is an area where America excels
-- intellectual property and high-value added products and services” (para. 4 & 5).
As we see software piracy is a global concern and various efforts have been put forth to
stem the vice. However, little success has been achieved as the culprits always find new ways to
skip the traps. Software companies together with law enforcement agencies have thus been
playing a cat and rat race with the pirates always on the winning side. This menace can however
be stemmed by having the most affected individuals and organizations, come up with research
questions that try to identify and analyze the source of the vice. Being the owner of a gaming
company, copyright infringements such as software piracy is not a new thing to me. Year in year
out, I struggle with the problem and not even the involvement of law enforcement agencies has
generated much positive results. My company continues to lose a lot of revenue form the vice
mainly because I have not taken steps to understand what software piracy is and done extensive
research to establish its inner truth. With this in mind, it is important to come up with a research
problem that seeks to elaborate how the manipulative programs used for software piracy are
created. I will thus come up with a research question focused on software piracy. This will allow
me to effectively understand the vulnerabilities that exist in the programming code and how to
seal the loop holes. The statistical data what will be compiled as part of the literature analysis
will by far assist in coming up with better ways to manage the problem (Alliance,2015).
To begin with, there is a need to describe the organizational; problem and this entails
familiarizing ourselves with both the economic and financial impacts of the gaming application.
We also need to consider the available statistics to determine the extent of the problem at hand.
Then we can look at the purpose of the study which will include understanding the techniques
and strategies that are used to manipulate the application. Unless we get to the root of the
problem we cannot solve it. Thus it is important at this level to understand the way the pirating is
done. This can be achieved by doing extensive research on software piracy issues. Thirdly it is
important to have the application manufacturer’s device research according to the current
forecasted concerns. Some of the research questions that at this time I see that I will research in
my Portfolio Project titled “Software Piracy: The Growing Global Problem” (Rustman, 2014)
include (See Appendix MGT575 Section I Worksheet: Organizational Problem):
Q1: what are the cost benefits associated with the problem?
Q2: what are the implementation risks?
Q3: What are the benefits to be achieved? MOVE THESE TO #3 Or CHANGE TUTOR
2. Purpose of the Investigation
Ask: What do you want to find out? What do you want to do?
Write in a clear and concise style: Develop a two or three paragraph summary of the existing
problem and succinctly state the purpose or intent of the investigation.
Example: As a result of voluntary employee turnover increase from 10% to 35% in 2009 related
to the relocation of ACME Corporation, new employees are necessarily hired and trained to meet
the expected levels of productivity for the company. ACME Corporation has a proprietary
training system reported to cost on average $125,000 to train new employees, while the light
manufacturing industry average was $62,000 per employee in 2010. Therefore, the purpose of
this investigation will be to study the impacts that the cost of new employee training may have
on the ACME company as this will impact the year end profit and loss reports. Further, the
investigation will include a cost/benefit analysis on three leading training methods widely used in
the light manufacturing industry and an implementation risk assessment specific to ACME
Corporation.
3. Management/Business Questions
Ask: What is the over-riding question that the decision maker wants to know?
Example: What is the most cost-effective training system with the least risk for ACME
Corporation to ensure that new employees are trained to meet the manufacturing projections in
the newly relocated facilities.
Ask: What are the specific question(s) that the will be investigated in answer to the
Management/Business Question? (2 to 4 specific questions only).
Example: Research Q1: What are the costs associated with training new employees on the
current training system and the impacts on ACME Corporation?
Research Q2: What are the costs and benefits of the top three light manufacturing training
systems?
Research Q3: What are the implementation risks associated with selecting and installing a new
training system for ACME corporation versus organizational risks associated with ACME's
proprietary training system?
Write in a clear and concise manner: Describe in a paragraph a transition to this sub-section to
give the reader the context of the information. The Management/Business Question and more
specific questions can remain in the listed form seen in the Example.
4. Intended Audience
The intended audience is my management staff and others organizations within the
software and gaming software industry. Its task is to review the information gathered in the
research study. By so doing, my companies and other organizations can come up with strategies
that will serve to ensure that the menace is reduced as we know there is no real way to eradicate
it but we hopefully it could be reduced to a manageable level.
5. Summary of Section Highlights
Ask: What are the 4-6 major points I want to highlight from this section?
If a reader were to review only the Summary of Section Highlights, would the overall purpose of
this investigation be understood?
Write clearly and concisely: Develop one to two paragraphs to include the major points and an
introduction of the purpose of Section II.
References
Alliance, T. S. (2015, January 7th). Piracy Impact Study. Retrieved from The Business Software
Alliance: http://portal.bsa.org/piracyimpact2010/
Brodkin, Jon (2012). Ballmer to Hu: 90% of Microsoft customers in China using pirated
software. Microsoft CEO raises concerns to Chinese president about intellectual property
protection. Retrieved from
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2199038/software/ballmer-to-hu--90--ofmicrosoft-customers-in-china-using-pirated-software.html
Fitzgerald, B. (2012). Software Piracy: Study Claims 57 Percent Of The World Pirates Software.
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/software-piracy-studybsa_n_1563006.html
Lunden, I. (2014). U.S. Thanksgiving, Black Friday Sales Break $1B; Total Holiday Spend
Online Will Be $89B. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/01/u-sthanksgiving-black-friday-sales-break-1b-total-holiday-spend-online-will-be-89b/
Rustman, Harvey. (2014). Software Piracy: The Growing Global Problem. Unpublished Paper,
MGT575, Colorado State University-Global Campus, Denver, Colorado.
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