Management 496 Consulting Project Descriptions

AccuWeather (9:05 – 9:55 a.m.)
As a part of AccuWeather’s initiative to unify the experience between their iOS and Android apps, our team will explore how to make a weather app “sticky” and which new features should be adopted in the next generation of AccuWeather’s app. We will conduct in-depth interviews with students to understand how weather apps can solve problems for consumers, tap into the daily routines of consumers, and address fears and insecurities associated with weather. After compiling the qualitative data from the interviews, our team will create various personas of typical millennial weather habits, in order to determine which new features will add value and personalization to the AccuWeather app to convince a consumer to switch weather apps. We will present our findings to the Director of Marketing Research, Marketing Research Analysts, and the Marketing Research and IT Departments at AccuWeather.

Raytheon (10:10 – 11:00 a.m.)
Our team’s goal for the semester is to develop a survey assessing organizational culture and job satisfaction at State College’s Raytheon branch. First, the team conducted a literature review of the research within workplace motivation, satisfaction, engagement and culture fields, helping us to gain a solid theoretical basis to draw from for the rest of our research. Next, we met with our clients to discuss where the problems lie within the organization and to gauge information is most important to measure. Raytheon has recently hired many recent graduates, ages 22 to 25, and they also have a large number of older employees in their 50’s and 60’s, giving them a bimodal age distribution in their workforce. The next step was to conduct focus groups with these two demographic groups, new and experienced, to learn if we are missing any important parts of their jobs that contribute to their satisfaction and the culture of the organization and to ascertain if there are generational differences in preferred cultures and in job satisfaction. We also want to ask current Penn State students, in STEM-focused majors, about expectations for future jobs and career paths so Raytheon can gain more insight into what is important to their new hires in the near future.

Using the qualitative information gathered during the employee focus group and the previously acquired information from meetings and literature review, we will develop the survey to evaluate the work satisfaction of employees, looking into job content and job context, the current and aspirational culture of Raytheon from the employee’s perspective, and a personality test to assess if an employee’s felt satisfaction and perceived culture are linked to their personality. Using the information gathered over the life of the project, we hope to find common themes within the survey responses that, when re-evaluated and fixed, can lead to higher retention rates of employees for Raytheon as the company will have a better understanding for what is working well within the organization and what requires some added attention.

Career & Corporate Connections (1:25 – 2:15 p.m.)
Our team’s goal for the semester is to conduct research and present recommendations to Smeal’s Office of Career and Corporate Connections to enhance its offerings. The team held focus groups and surveyed Smeal students to gain an understanding of current perceptions of the office and common career aspirations. We explored to see if the office's offerings align with student needs and identified future trends in career development. We also did research on other Big 10 schools and top business schools to benchmark Smeal. Our project concludes by researching industry 4.0 trends, the skills and competencies needed for a young professional to succeed and Generation Z's tendencies and career aspirations. In total, our research is intended to provide a comprehensive outlook on the next generation of career development.