Do you see any issues with what’s going on? Next slide, write a one page reflection summary discussing your individual lessons learned in this case.
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CIS-480 Course ProjectAPA
All written assignments are required to be submitted using proper APA style. For a review of APA visit the following URL.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
Project Type The course project is a group project. The facilitator will create the groups during the first week of class. All members of the group are required to participate. It is highly recommended that you utilize the skills within your group to develop and deliver the course project.
Overview The course project consists of team members meeting throughout each week to work on strategies for their fishing fleet.
Additional detail is provided below regarding the power point (PPT) presentation that will be submitted in weeks 4 and 8.
The project is intended to expose you to the strategies businesses use in the real world.
Written Proposal If you haven’t reviewed the story on Chinese fishing, please do so NOW!
You have been assigned to a team that owns a fishing fleet. You start with 3 ships and have the opportunity to buy more each year (each round = 1 year). There are a number of teams (other fishing fleets) that you are competing against. The goal is to maximize your profits and total assets over 23 years/rounds. We will do this via a simulator called Fishbanks.
Fishbanks is a dynamic, multi-player game that will allow us to compete with other fishing teams. Teams seek to maximize their net worth in an open-access fishery. The simulation interface provides teams with information about current competitive and resource conditions. During each round, teams make two types of decisions: (1) they can change the size of their fleet by buying, selling, or ordering ships, and (2) they decide how to use their fleet by sending their ships to the deep-sea fishery, the coastal fishery, or keeping them in the harbor. Players can also try to negotiate agreements to manage the fishery more sustainably and equitably. Everyone on the team needs to review the instruction video!
Key Lessons
Fishbanks creates the opportunity for you to learn about business strategy and the fundamental lessons about the sustainable management of renewable resources. These lessons include:
Resource Dynamics: Renewable resource stocks are reduced as extractors harvest the resource or as a result of inadvertent so-called “side effects” of other economic activity (e.g., sewage dumped in a river, greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere). To be sustainable, resource extraction and degradation must be balanced by regeneration and renewal: fish can be taken no faster than they reproduce, trees can be cut no faster than new ones grow, carbon dioxide can be emitted into the atmosphere no faster than it is removed. Regeneration and renewal for many important resources, including fish and other fauna, forests and other flora, fresh water, and the climate, are not constant, but depend on the state of the resource. For biological resources such as fish and forests, the level of the resource is limited by the carrying capacity of the ecosystem that supports it. Prior to extraction by humans, the resource stock will be near the maximum level the ecosystem can support. As extraction rises, regeneration will tend to rise as each remaining organism has more food, space and other resources it needs to reproduce. The ecosystem compensates for extraction– the more you take, the more grow back. However, when the resource becomes sufficiently depleted, regeneration
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peaks and falls—at some point there are simply too few fish remaining for reproduction to offset extraction. Now the dynamics shift: the more you take, the fewer grow back. The smaller the remaining resource stock, the smaller the rate of regeneration, further lowering the stock in a vicious cycle that can rapidly lead to resource collapse.
The Tragedy of the Commons: Historically, a “commons” was the common pasture on which any villager could graze their livestock. In contrast to private property, such “common pool” or “open access” resources can be used by anyone. If the resources were managed to maximize total profit or social welfare, extraction would be limited to no more than the maximum sustainable yield. However, common pool resources are subject to overexploitation; it is rational for each extractor to expand their take as long as it is profitable to do so. Combined with resource dynamics (see above), the result is often the destruction of the resource. The tragedy arises not merely because the resource is destroyed, but because the resource is destroyed as a consequence of each individual’s pursuit of self-interest. The profits from taking one more fish or cutting one more tree benefit the individual extractor today while the costs of reduced future harvest are borne by all. An individual who stops harvesting simply allows others to take a little more, with no change in the outcome, so it is not rational to reduce your own take.
Misperceptions of Feedback: Research shows people do not understand the basic dynamics of resource accumulation, nor the feedback processes that control extraction and regeneration. Further, extractors and policymakers often have poor knowledge of the ecological relationships governing regeneration and resource levels. Stock levels, regeneration, and even harvest rates are often known imperfectly. There are long delays in estimating and reporting resource stocks, harvests and regeneration. Thus, even if fisheries were fully privatized, thereby eliminating the incentives for overexploitation that create the Tragedy of the Commons, extractors will likely overharvest. Experiments show exactly this with simulated fisheries: participants operating a fully private fishery still over expand their fleets, overharvest, and lose money. Further, there are delays in building up extraction capacity, and investments in capacity are often long-lived and largely irreversible, particularly because entire communities and economies grow up around the extractive activity. Political interests in continued extraction build up, cause opposition to and delays in the implementation of government policies or industry self-regulation to preserve the resource. Many open access resources involve extractors from different communities and nations, leading to additional delay while laws are debated and treaties negotiated. Misperceptions of the feedbacks governing resources, poor information, long delays and irreversible commitments often doom the resource and the communities dependent on it. By the time the community discovers that they are harvesting unsustainably, it is often too late.
Successful Governance of the Commons Is Possible: While the barriers to successful management of common pool resources described above are formidable, it is possible for communities to self-regulate and govern their common resources sustainably. Political scientist Elinor Ostrom has documented many examples and analyzed the conditions for successful governance, winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009 for her work (see e.g. Ostrom 2009, Ostrom et al. 2010, Ostrom and Hess 2007). Successful management of the commons has been documented on a variety of scales, from local communities such as individual fishing villages to the public provision of community services such as police, firefighting, education, and libraries, to global agreements such as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans atmospheric atomic weapons tests, and the Montreal Protocol, which limits production of halocarbons that destroy stratospheric ozone. Governance can be initiated and maintained by informal relationships among community members, but often, and particularly for larger resource systems with more and more diverse actors, it requires institutionalizing agreements, monitoring methods, enforcement mechanisms and other policies in formal laws and regulations (at local, state/provincial, national or international levels). Such agreements enable communities to act collectively to improve societal welfare.
Instructions: Having watched the instruction video you now know how to play the game. There are multiple deadlines each week for your team.
Monday at 11:59 PM All orders and allocations must be completed.
Tuesday at 11:59 PM All trades must be completed.
Wednesday at 11:59 PM All orders and allocations must be completed.
Thursday at 11:59 PM All trades must be completed.
Saturday at 11:59 PM All orders and allocations must be completed.
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Sunday at 11:59 PM All trades must be completed.
The game has the potential of 23 rounds, each round consisting of trades and orders/allocations so we’ll be doing 3 rounds per week. Unless we speed things up along the way, we’ll probably only finish about 18 rounds. Your instructor will announce the start of the simulator, typically in week 2. Group login information will be sent to each group by your instructor.
Deliverables – [Weekly] First, you need to pick a team leader. This is the person that will enter the decisions into the simulator. While everyone on the team has the ability to do this, ONLY one person, your team leader should be doing this, and only after you all agree to what you’re going to do for the next round. If someone on your team makes decisions for you, they cannot be retracted. Everyone in the group, including the leader will choose a Team member number (1,2, 3, or 4) for their specific analysis (see week 4 deliverables).
On your group discussion board, you need to be posting your individual thoughts/strategy as to how you think your team should proceed for the next round. Remember, you will be doing a lot of posting as you have 3 rounds per week and 6 deadlines!
Deliverables – [Due Week 4] In week 4 you will be presented with data on all the teams including yours. Your team job is to analyze this data and present the following:
Each team member will create 2 PPT slides as follows:
Team member #1: Analyze the fish stock, deep and coast. Present a graph showing year by year the fish levels in each area. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues with what’s going on?
Team member #2: Analyze the ships deployed by the team. Present a graph showing where each team’s ships are deployed. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues with what’s going on?
Team member #3: Analyze the current cash on hand and profit of each team. Present a graph showing where each team stands. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. How is your team doing compared to the others? Why?
Team member #4: Analyze the assets of each team. Present a graph showing where each team stands with their assets. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues here? (you may look at other data in the spreadsheet to answer this)
Someone (other than the leader who is submitting values each round to the simulator) on the team needs to put these 8 slides together and then do a 1-2 page summary stating what the teams strategy is for the coming years. As a result, the team will submit to the team discussion board this PPT called “Week 4 FINAL PPT”. (Note: if a team member is a no show put their name on a blank slide and indicate that they did not participate. If your team has less than 4 members you have the option of doing all 4 assignments or picking the one you want to do….in agreement with the other members).
Also this week, each team member will complete the Team Evaluation form and submit it to your week 4 Course Project dropbox
Weeks 5-7
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In weeks 5-7 continue to discuss strategies with your team and be sure the team leader is making all of the deadlines throughout the week. Be sure to take notes along the way as you will be discussing this in your final submission.
Final Submission[Due Week 8] In week 8 you will be presented with data on all the teams including yours. Your team job is to analyze this data and present the following:
Each team member will create 2 PPT slides as follows:
Team member #1: Analyze the number of ships deployed by the teams. Present a graph showing where each team’s ships are deployed. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues with what’s going on? Next slide, write a one page reflection summary discussing your individual lessons learned in this case.
Team member #2: Analyze the assets of each team. Present a graph showing where each team stands with their assets. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues here? (you may look at other data in the spreadsheet to answer this). Next slide, write a one page reflection summary discussing your individual lessons learned in this case.
Team member #3: Analyze the fish stock, deep and coast. Present a graph showing year by year the fish levels in each area. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. Do you see any issues with what’s going on? Next slide, write a one page reflection summary discussing your individual lessons learned in this case.
Team member #4: Analyze the current cash on hand and profit of each team. Present a graph showing where each team stands. Next slide, discuss your findings/analysis in one paragraph. How is your team doing compared to the others? Why? Next slide, write a one page reflection summary discussing your individual lessons learned in this case.
Someone (other than the leader who is submitting values each round to the simulator) on the team needs to put these 12 slides together. As a result, the team will submit to the team discussion board this PPT called “Week 8 FINAL PPT”. (Note: if a team member is a no show put their name on a blank slide and indicate that they did not participate. If your team has less than 4 members you have the option of doing all 4 assignments or picking the one you want to do….in agreement with the other members).
Grading:
Overall this project is worth 18% of your final grade, broken down as follows:
Week 4: 8.5%
Week 8: 8.5%
Winning team 1%
2nd place team .9%
3rd place team .8%
4th place team .7%
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5th place team .6%
6th place team .5%
7th place team .4%
8th place team .3%
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