THE TASK:

Imagine that you have been asked by the Board of Directors of your company to bring them up to speed on the problem of  (1) "Subprime Mortgages" AND (2) some dissatisfaction with its corporate culture. They want to establish a task force (several actually) to see if there can be some design initiated for an articulated corporate culture. They want you to emphasize the ethical dimension in the corporate culture so they don't repeat the mistakes that occurred in some corporations that did not have a sound corporate culture. They know that you have taken this course in SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF MANAGEMENT so they expect you to give a carefully argued TEAM presentation and analysis. They do not want the presentations and analyses to be too long --- about 2500 words would be quite sufficient.

Your company is a strong believer in teamwork so the Board wants you to work as TEAMS  in putting together your report. Unfortunately, your other tasks and travels make it impossible for your teams to get together in a room for any length of time so you have to do most of your work over the Internet. Fortunately, QuickPlace offers you the ideal tool to develop TEAM analyses and presentations. You will notice that this project combines the features of a threaded discussion and the task of writing. The threaded discussion that leads up to the actual writing should contain at least 5 contributions from each member of the team. The merits of the report will be judged on the team discussion and the reflection of that discussion in the final report. The contributions should be content oriented in addition to any contributions that may be addressing the manner in which the work has been divided or how the report will be assembled. The contributions to this discussion should be made on an on-going basis. You should not wait until the end of the discussion period to make your contribution. Waiting until the end is not fair to the other members of the team and will jeopardize the success to the project.

The Board wants three reports; one from each of the teams. They want three reports to check one team against another. And then they want to recompose the teams for the second report. The teams will be composed by a random process.

Since the cases are so current you will have to use news magazines and newspapers for your research. I suggest Time and Newsweek and also The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. You probably all get The Wall Street Journal so you can go to WSJ.com as an easy resource. You can also take advantage of the Dow Jones Interactive website, <http://www.sba.udayton.edu/it/dji.asp>, which the School of Business Administration makes available to you. The link to the Dow Jones Interactive website is accessed form the SBA link identified above, but you will probably have to use a computer at the university to access this site.  Much good and accurate information is available from these sources. The library at this site is a particularly valuable treasure trove of references.

The first report is due Sunday, February 24. The second report is due Sunday, April 27.
 

DIRECTIONS: 1. Go to https://quickplace.udayton.edu/QuickPlace/mba652_ulrich/Main.nsf 2. Click on your "Team and number." [Team members are identified at the bottom of this page.] 3. Click on your "Team and number --- Discussion." 4. Click on "new." 5. Select "Page" and click "next." 6. Enter a brief title in # 1 and type your comment(s) in #2 and then click "publish". 7. Point to and click on the comment, response, or revision which you wish to address. 8. Click on "new" if you wish to make a new comment; click on "respond" to respond to what another member in the group has said; click on "revision" if you are making changes in a text that has already been started. You will always be creating a new page or editing an existing page.

TEAM 1 Subprime Mortgage Lending Practices Anglin, Bauer, Christian, Herald, Holden, Reed 02/17: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 02/24: Due Date for Final Report	TEAM 2 Subprime Mortgage Lending Practices Abraham, Leath, Malott, Novell, Steinke 02/17: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 02/24: Due Date for Final Report	TEAM 3 Subprime Mortgage Lending Practices Banks, Gels, Korte, Moore, [Morton is no longer in the course.] 02/17: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 02/24: Due Date for Final Report
TEAM 4 "Creating a Corporate Culture" Bauer, Holden, Leath, Malott, Reed 04/20: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 04/27: Due Date for Final Report	TEAM 5 "Creating a Corporate Culture" Abraham, Anglin, Banks, Gels, Korte 04/20: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 04/27: Due Date for Final Report	TEAM 6 "Creating a Corporate Culture" Christian, Herald, Moore, Norvell, Steinke 04/20: Last Day for Contributions to Discussion 04/27: Due Date for Final Report