A comprehensive evaluation of the group of businesses a company has diversified into involves: a. evaluating the attractiveness of industries the company has diversified into and the competitive strength of each of its business units. b. evaluating the strategic fits and resource fits among the various sister businesses. c. ranking the performance prospects of the businesses from best to worst and determining what the corporate parent's priorities should be in allocating resources to its various businesses. d. using the results of the prior analytical steps as a basis for crafting new strategic moves to improve the company's overall performance.

Activity-based costing (abc) is not truly a cost collection mechanism as much as it is an inventory valuation method. the main purpose for implementing an activity-based cost system is to try to overcome some of the cost distortions that occur in traditional costing from product differences when there are variations in size and complexity. however, one of the disadvantages of utilizing abc is that the additional information gathering necessary to implement costing with that level of detail might be beyond the reach of some companies with resource or financial constraints. with this in mind, what kinds of industries or companies do you think would benefit most from using activity-based costing and why? in designing or modifying an accounting system to capture appropriate costs for abc, what considerations do you think would need to be made?