Select an industry sector of interest and use available data to estimate the minimum efficient scale (MES) of operations in it.
What will be an ideal response?
Clearly, this is not an easy task to do rigorously. Estimating an order of magnitude is more realistic.
Start by obtaining available statistics on industry production or market size. Note that although there
may be many country-based markets only a handful of countries may be producers (as exemplified
in the bicycle industry case study). Identify the known, major producers and estimate their respective
outputs. Assuming that unless circumstances are truly exceptional, at least the biggest producer must
be operating at or above MES, this producer’s output defines the upper bound, while the outputs of
lower share producers indicate the lower bound. In the music industry case study, UMG’s and
Sony’s market shares were reportedly between 30% and 25% while unprofitable EMI’s share was
12-13%. This suggests that in global terms, MES for a competitive company lies between these
extremes of activity level; hence, no more than four or five companies can operate globally in this
arena. (More accurately, it is most appropriate to apply MES to a specific technology, or technology
set. CD blank disc pressing is capital intensive and may support relatively few suppliers, whereas
burning music or video discs is capable of low volume output even in the home, supporting a
multitude of producers (including pirates!).
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Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).
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a. training programs sometimes backfire and increase polarization of attitudes. b. increasing awareness of minority issues is more important than improving communication skills. c. unequal status interactions among different types of people reduces prejudice. d. minority groups should be given different goals within the organization.
Read the t statistic from the t distribution table and choose the correct answer. For a one-tailed test (lower tail), using a sample size of 14, and at the 5% level of significance, t =
A. 1.771. B. 1.761. C. -1.771. D. -1.762.
A business person paid his influential state senator $25,000 to influence other legislators to pass a bill favorable to his business. This payment would not be illegal if the bill related to prescription drugs
Indicate whether the statement is true or false