assignment

Harvard's Michael Porter has proposed the value chain as a tool for identifying ways to create more customer value.3 According to this model, every firm is a synthesis of activities performed to design, produce, market, deliver, and support its product. The value chain identifies nine strategically relevant activitiesfive primary and four support activitiesthat create value and cost in a specific business. The primary activities are (1) inbound logistics, or bringing materials into the business; (2) operations, or converting materials into final products; (3) outbound logistics, or shipping out final products; (4) marketing, which includes sales; and (5) service. Specialized departments handle the support activities(1) procurement, (2) technology development, (3) human resource management, and (4) firm infrastructure. (Infrastructure covers the costs of general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, and government affairs.) The firm's task is to examine its costs and performance in each value-creating activity and look for ways to improve it. Managers should estimate competitors' costs and performances as benchmarks against which to compare their own. And they should go further and study the "best of class" practices of the world's best companies. We can identify best-practice companies by consulting customers, suppliers, distributors, financial analysts, trade associations, and magazines to see whom they rate as doing the best job. Even the best companies can benchmark, against other industries if necessary, to improve their performance. To support its corporate goal to be more innovative, GE has benchmarked against P&G as well as developing its own best practices

91. A business risks losing its good reputation if it

92. To reduce the risk of unauthorized access to confidential data, businesses use security software to

protect their

93. When businesses continuously monitor the laws and implement changes to remain in compliance, they

are

94. When managers have the ability to understand how all of the functions of the company are interrelated,

they possess

95. What must occur before any management functions can be carried out?

96. The organizing function of management is important to a business because it

97. Which of the following is a true statement about human resources needs:

98. What management function involves motivating and encouraging an employee?

99. Measuring the productivity of a business's employees is an example of

100. Which of the following employees would most likely be described as "innovative" by his/her supervisor: