Question

You are a management consultant with McKenzie and Company. You specialize in helping companies accurately identify and acquire the appropriate production inputs for their operations. Based on your extensive experience, you know that most production inputs fall into one or more of the following categories: materials and labor resources or information resources. However, the degree to which of these resources will be the dominant input depends on the type of business. In order to streamline your future projects, you have decided to put together a list of business types and their dominant category of production inputs. For each of the business types listed below, indicate which of the two production input categories would be most dominant for that business type.

a. Gold mining company
b. An online news publisher
c. Commercial bank
d. Automobile manufacturer
e. Accounting and bookkeeping firm
f. Food processing company

Answer 1

a. Gold mining company - Materials and Labor resources

Gold mining company would need miners and mining equipment to to get to the gold so would fall under Materials and labor resources.

b. An online news publisher - Information resources

News is information on the current affairs of the world so the input here would fall under Online news publisher.

c. Commercial bank - Information resources

Banks need to know who they are giving loans to and this involves a lot of risk assessment which is information so this falls under information resources.

d. Automobile manufacturer - Materials and Labor resources

In an automobile manufacturer, the inputs would be the people assembling the cars and the materials needed to build the cars so this is under Materials and Labor.

e. Accounting and bookkeeping firm - Information resources

Accounting firms compile information they are given to make coherent reports of financial activity in a period so the input is informational.

f. Food processing company - Materials and Labor

Food processing requires inputs of food materials for processing and will need labor to do so. They can therefore be classified under Materials and Labor.