Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Over the course of 2020, individuals and organizations were thrown various unprecedented obstacles that necessitated flexibility, empathy, and understanding. Many organizations were forced to reevaluate their financial status, their purpose, and how they could provide for their employees. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that most companies had to introduce a ‘work from home’ policy, drastically decreasing the face-to-face contact that employees had with each other and leadership. The virus, coupled with the social and political unrest in the U.S. in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 presidential election, inspired many companies to reframe their organization and redefine their goals.<br/> The B2B (business-to-business) Marketing Agency, The Mx Group, is preparing for a change in leadership, with the current Chief Executive Officer and Founder stepping down, being replaced by the President of the company. The company plans to execute the transition in the spring of 2022, allowing them the rest of 2021 to plan for the change, catering to employees’ individual and the company’s collective needs. It was also prompted by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic to reevaluate the values that it upholds as an organization, coinciding with the change in leadership. Leaders of the company are actively encouraging employees to engage with these values by recognizing when a colleague performs in alignment with a value.<br/> In reframing their organization, The Mx Group has a significant opportunity to uniquely position itself in the industry. Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal (2017) introduced four frames: human resources, symbolic, structural, and political, as a way to guide a transformative application of leadership and management in business. Analyzed from these perspectives, The Mx Group can utilize contemporary ideas to efficiently and effectively seize its opportunity of embedding new values and a change in leadership.

Chutneys are a form of Indian condiment that can be made in many different flavors and paired with various foods. However, the availability of chutneys in the United States is very limited and many people have not tried them before. With this observation in mind, we founded A2Z Chutneys, which is a business that aims to distribute a variety of organic and locally produced chutneys. Through the Founders Lab program, A2Z Chutneys was created and research was conducted to justify the viability of our business. We were able to gather and interpret data from potential customers, which allowed us to identify a target market. Additionally, time was spent identifying and creating a variety of authentic and unique chutneys that have proven to be desired. This report demonstrates and outlines the feasibility of A2Z Chutneys in providing unique and desirable flavors to the population.

We founded an operational startup company and developed a consumable product to sell to ASU students. Our primary objective is the provision of affordable nutritious energy bars to overworked and overwhelmed college students. We aim to support hungry students in efforts to fuel their bodies efficiently and nutritiously; in order to do so, we donate 20% of our profits to charity to support students in debt. Our business won the Business Catalyst Choice Award for having "the most promising business concept" in the Founder's Lab 2022-23 Cohort.

In the end, an increase in repurchases of company stock will also influence the rate of dividends to increase. This means, an investor should not necessarily worry about the dividends they receive, but rather to see if the company is making profit at a consistent rate and reinvesting into value-added activities. Through the major pillars of finance, technology, legal, and human resources, the budget for reinvestment can be optimized by investing into these respective categories with percentages that are mindful of the specific companies needs and functions. Any firm that chooses to ensure proven methods of growth will enact a combination of these four verticals. A larger emphasis on finance will branch out efficiency in the entire organization, as finance control everything from the toilet paper to the acquisitions the company is making. The more technology is used to reduce redundancy and inefficient or costly operations, the more capability the organization will have. IT, however, comes with its technical challenges; having a team on-hand or even outsourced, to solve the critical problems to help the business continue operation. Over-reliance into technology can be detrimental to a business as well if clear processes are not set about straight to counteract problems the business will face like IT ticketing systems or recovery and continuity support. Therefore, technology will require a larger chunk of attention as well.

The upcoming legal and HR investments a company will make will depend upon its current position and thus the restructuring will differ for every firm. Each company has its own flavour and style of work. In that regard, the required legal counsel will vary; different problems will require different solutions for risk control and management, which are often professionally advised by intelligent corporate counsel. This ability to hire efficient legal counsel would not arise in the first place if a firm were to give out dividends; the leftover profit would have gone towards the shareholders and not back into growing the equity of the business. Lastly, nothing is possible without the contribution of people, and their efforts. A quality that long-lasting, successful businesses have, is they are investing in their people and development. Paying salaries, insurances, bonuses, all requires extra capital that is needed to be set aside in order to grow human capital. Good people, better people. There are qualities for each role that need to be defined and a process for attracting talent needs to be invested in. This process can also include outsourcing to an external firm who specializes in these strategies. By retaining profits internally, the company is able to stretch its legs to have further reach upon the market they work in. Financially and statistically, dividends are likely to grow as well with the increase in equity due to the increase in security an investor feels with more cash reserve and liquidity within the company.

All in all, a company should not be pressured into giving out periodic payments in predetermined timeframes, in other words a dividend, to investors even when they are insisting. Rather, pitch and prove, a new method for reinvestment within the company that will raise the value of the company, through proven methods like the value chain model, to increase the equity in the company. By expanding the scope and capability, the company is allowing for a larger target market which will reap more benefits; none of it would be possible if it had continued to give out large percentages of capital to investors as dividends. Companies, and investors, should not be worried about dividends at all as a matter of fact; an increase in stock buyback, in other words reinvesting into the company, will increase the rate of dividends anyway, due to increased confidence and capital within the company.