Assignment:
Preparing for a Rainy Day: It is Raining
For this assignment, you are to prepare a paper that serves primarily as an organized outline for the preparation of the conversation you plan to have with your CEO. Your CEO has requested a meeting with you with some degree of urgency. Here is the issue.
· Budget fluctuation – As a budget manager, your system has experienced a significant budget fluctuation. For this assignment, you are welcome to define that fluctuation in any way that you would like. You have read in this learning module about budget fluctuations and you have identified earlier in this course a specific organizational context in which you are working. You will define the budget fluctuation in preparation for this meeting in this assignment.
· Enrollment fluctuation – Unfortunately, as of late, the university has done a very poor job overall of forecasting enrollment. Numbers have gone up and down without any conceivable explanation. Sadly, when things have gone well and enrollment has risen, there has been very little predictive capacity. Similarly, when enrollments have dropped, no one seems to have a thoughtful explanation.
· It is raining… now what? – Simply put, for this assignment you are planning on sitting down with our CEO and responding to these issues. This has been an unanticipated fluctuation that has everyone in the organization up in arms. Your first goal is going to be to make sure that your CEO can put these fluctuations in the appropriate context and likewise has faith in you as a budget manager to deal with it. To that end, you are to write a paper which will once again serve as an outline in preparation for this conversation.
Your work should come in the form of a formal APA paper and come in the following components.
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Component 1: Introduction – In this introduction, you will provide an overview of the role of budget fluctuation in businesses today. How common is it? Is this something we should be prepared for?
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Component 2: Define the fluctuations –Once again, you were afforded some poetic license here in describing the fluctuations and articulating how they relates to the business that you are in. You are welcome to get creative here but make sure that indeed your reflections are directly related to the case study you have created and what you have learned in this chapter and through other ancillary readings.
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Component 3: Your suggested response – What is your suggested response here? What do you suggest that the organization do in relationship to this change? What steps should be taken next?
Please ensure in executing this assignment that you make specific references to the readings provided as well as the utilization of at least three outside references that can be used to support your ideas presented. The use of outside sources is important because even though the materials provided for this course are excellent, as a graduate student you are expected to be able to consult a variety of sources regarding a given topic and synthesize that scholarly input into a thoughtful set of recommendations, conclusions, etc.
The essay should be 1850- words and should include at least three (3) citations. The sections should be clearly marked with headings so that your instructor knows which points you are addressing. Follow the guidelines for APA writing style. The title page and references page do not count towards the minimum word amount for this assignment.
Assignment Expectations
Length: 1850- words; answers must thoroughly address the questions in a clear, concise manner.
Structure: Include a title page and reference page in APA style. These do not count toward the minimum word count for this assignment.
References: Use the appropriate APA style in-text citations and references for all resources utilized to answer the questions. Include at least three (3) scholarly sources to support your claims.
Format: Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx).
