As a manager, you meet with each of your team members quarterly to review their progress toward their written and agreed-upon goals. one of your employees, julie, had a goal of increasing sales in her territory by 10 percent in the first quarter of the year. however, when you review julie's sales numbers, you see that her sales have actually gone down. you know julie is a hard worker and has an excellent relationship with her customers. when you sit down to discuss her performance, she explains what is happening in her territory. a major automobile manufacturer, which once provided 25,000 jobs, has moved its operations to mexico and laid off all 25,000 of its workers. as a result, the economy in julie's region has become quite depressed, and the residents are living off their savings. taking the steps of the planning/control cycle into account, what is your best course of action with julie?
a. recognize the economic reality of her territory and change her goals to make them ambitious but realistic.
b. terminate her employment with the company.
c. put her on probation, explaining that she will be terminated if her performance does not improve in the next quarter.
d. transfer her to another territory and replace her with another sales rep who is new to the company and therefore "hungry."
e. arrange for her to take a refresher course on sales methods.

Blue computers, a major pc manufacturer in the united states, currently has plants in kentucky and pennsylvania. the kentucky plant has a capacity of 1 million units a year and the pennsylvania plant has a capacity of 1.5 million units a year. the firm divides the united states into five markets: northeast, southeast, midwest, south, and west. each pc sells for $1,000. the firm anticipates a 50 perc~nt growth in demand (in each region) this year (after which demand will stabilize) and wants to build a plant with a capacity of 1.5 million units per year to accommodate the growth. potential sites being considered are in north carolina and california. currently the firm pays federal, state, and local taxes on the income from each plant. federal taxes are 20 percent of income, and all state and local taxes are 7 percent of income in each state. north carolina has offered to reduce taxes for the next 10 years from 7 percent to 2 percent. blue computers would like to take the tax break into consideration when planning its network. consider income over the next 10 years in your analysis. assume that all costs remain unchanged over the 10 years. use a discount factor of 0.1 for your analysis. annual fixed costs, production and shipping costs per unit, and current regional demand (before the 50 percent growth) are shown in table 5-13. (a) if blue computers sets an objective of minimizing total fixed and variable costs, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? (b) if blue computers sets an objective of maximizing after-tax profits, where should they build the new plant? how should the network be structured? variable production and shipping cost ($/unit) annual fixed cost northeast southeast midwest south west (million$) kentucky 185 180 175 175 200 150 pennsylvania 170 190 180 200 220 200 n. carolina 180 180 185 185 215 150 california 220 220 195 195 175 150 demand ('000 units/month) 700 400 400 300 600