Management Planning Control Activities 13-17

Activity 13: Bellagio Casino

1. Objective: maximise profits by providing a complete resort experience for guests, including nongaming amenities that commanded a premium price based on quality

Strategy: Locate resorts in desirable leisure and business travel markets; construct and maintain high-quality resorts and facilities; recruit, train and retain well-qualified and motivated employees to provide superior and friendly customer service; provide unique entertainment attractions; develop distinctive and memorable marketing and promotional program

Problems: the process involves and relies on personnel whose activity and ethic might be attracted by the enormous amount of money; result control which rely on the drop number is not an absolute method as there always a possibility of false drop subjected to biases and due to the nature of blackjack, it is not possible to measure the exact amount of total value that wagers have made.

2. Contingent factors that affect MCS choices in Bellagio

Business concentration: Based on the goals and main focuses of the company, it will develop its system to be relevant to assist company in achieving them. Strategy may vary between cost leadership or differentiate, whichever requires different techniques of control.

Company size: The larger the company is, the more sophisticated control system it may need. With a big corporation, they may operate in many businesses with distinctive features and course of actions. Therefore, the need for complicated and tight control is inevitable to ensure the efficiency in its operating and capture details about its revenue stream.

Personnel element: Whether there is personnel factor in the operating activities will substantially affect the company choices of control system as human involvement results in a higher degree of fraudulent and mistakes rather than employment of automatic machines.

Company size: Apparently, if it is a public company with its stock trading in the market, it has to develop a comprehensive control system that allow them to handle every number of in and out resources to prepare annual report as well as make instant improvement in internal system. Nevertheless, the same situation has rarely happened to privately held company as the need for fund from external resources is low so that its control might not be as tight as the public one.

3. Potential control costs

Direct cost: employment cost of experienced staffs (supervisor, dealers, counts staffs, and internal auditors), modern equipment (2,000 cameras)

Indirect cost: supporting department (human resource, maintenance, security), facilities (photocopy station, paper, office space)

These costs are essential in certifying the level of accuracy in control system, which strengthen the relevance and efficiency of management in a company. Both of the costs are correlatively to each other, which ensure the system run smoothly and help to prevent the occurrence of fraudulent.

Activity 14: Fallacy

Non sequiter/ Post hoc, ego propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this): The person may take other healthy actions (go to bed early or eat nutritious food) along with taking vitamin C to cure the illness. Furthermore, vitamin C only contribute to a healthy body and works as a supplementary when the body is in shortage of vitamin, but not an official medicine that can kill the virus.

Ad homenem: It is not relevant to personally attack someone to argue against his or her idea as it may truly come from their good intention of improving the quality of tertiary education. Furthermore, the raise in funding for higher education could benefit many groups of people such as students from isolated or low background families, their parents as the fund relieves the financial burden on them, and institutions with poor facilities.

False dilemma: When choosing an investment project, the range of considered factors is larger than only earnings or return. Moreover, other alternatives should be focused on, instead of presenting only two choices.

Non sequiter: While the conclusion is correct, it is correct for different reasons. Smoking causes cancer but not all smokers will die because of lung cancer. Additionally, cigarettes contain lots of cancer-causing substance and when people smoke it, they are inhaling harmful element that can damage their cells, and it also causes other types of cancer, but not just lung.

Activity 15: LEGO experiment

1. In the experiment with two sets of awards, there are some differences in working style of each team, which eventually bring different result in the number of LEGO sample made. Regarding to the tournament incentives, the team members work separately, they hardly communicate to each other, just quickly finish their part, and do not pay attention to what their teammates are doing. They also sit in their tables and try not to move so frequently to avoid wasting time. However, in terms of team-based, their actions are completely different. Specifically, before starting, they gather and talk to each other to decide in which way they can utilise their capability to make as much sample as possible. They changes their tables to shorten the time, communicate more, and look for the process of their members to prepare their part on time.

2. The possible reason in their divergence in course of actions is mainly in the criteria of setting their award. Indeed, if the reward focuses on individual performance, they will only care for their part and think about how to fasten their actions. Nevertheless, when the company concentrate on team effort and result, members will put themselves in others’ position, and try to work in a group as they know if they do not cooperate with each other, the total result will be affected and no reward will be given.

3. From the experiment, it can be concluded that managers should clarify their concentration whether on individual or group capability to design an appropriate incentive system as both ways have advantages and disadvantages. The matter can be decided based on the characteristic of the work, whether it is better to work individually or in a group since there are some process that individual will propose a better result in a shorter time than trying to complete in a group, or vice versa. Furthermore, if they put inappropriate incentive system in practice, it may lead to the deterioration in their overall performance, employees may feel that they are not truly rewarded to their abilities and eventually become demotivated.