Benchmarking involves:
1. comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross-company comparisons of the costs and effectiveness of these activities.
2. checking whether a company has achieved more of its financial and strategic objectives over the past five years relative to the other firms it is in direct competition with.
3. studying whether a company's resource strengths are more or less powerful than the resource strengths of rival companies.
4. studying how a company's competitive capabilities stack up against the competitive capabilities of selected companies known to have world-class competitive capabilities.
5. comparing the best practices in one industry against the best practices in another industry.

The hawthorne works was a large western electric factory with 45,000 employees. during the 1920s and 1930s, hawthorne works was the site of some well-known industrial studies. in one of the studies, researchers investigated the impact of different working conditions on worker productivity. prior to the start of the study, researchers secretly measured workers' productivity for several weeks. then researchers chose two workers, who then chose their own teams. the teams were separated from the general workforce and completed their work in different experiment rooms where the researchers could observe them more easily. over a 5-year period researchers manipulated the structure of the workday for each team (number and duration of breaks and number of hours per shift). for each of these changes in working conditions, the researchers measured the effect on productivity. for some conditions, such as frequent short breaks, workers rebelled by intentionally decreasing productivity.why did the researchers secretly measure the workers' productivity before creating the two treatment groups? a, to create similar treatment groups so that a cause-and-effect relationship could be establishedb, to draw conclusions about the productivity of all workers in the plant based on the test groupsc, to directly control for confounding variablesd, to provide a baseline for measuring worker productivity

In return for their with optimizing his painting project, the castle servant informed poly and digit that he saw someone dressed as the king leaving behind a trail of crumbs as he walked into the jester's room late last night. poly and digit have finally found the crisp-collecting culprit — it turns out the jester's shoe size and hair color match the clues that were found! in gratitude, poly and digit agree to the servant with his current task of replacing all of the tables and chairs in the castle. his goal is to determine which furniture company should produce the new furniture. he receives information from a company that customizes elegant furniture, and he wants to analyze the company's production process in order to calculate some problems about cost and availability. read the following scenario, and assist poly and digit as they the servant with his calculations. the fit for a king furniture company requires 2020 hours of labor to produce a standard table, and a chair requires 1212 hours of labor. the labor available is 565565 hours per week. the company can produce at most 3535 chairs per week.

After hearing a knock at your front door, you are surprised to see the prize patrol from a large, well-known magazine subscription company. it has arrived with the good news that you are the big winner, having won $21 million. you have three options.(a) receive $1.05 million per year for the next 20 years.(b) have $8.25 million today.(c) have $2.25 million today and receive $750,000 for each of the next 20 years.your financial adviser tells you that it is reasonable to expect to earn 13 percent on investments.