Case Assignment
As we begin to consider some parallels between the business world and the natural world, we can identify some very similar patterns in extinction, adaptation, and supply and demand in both. For example, an organism faces many challenges as it attempts to survive in the natural world, just as a business will struggle to succeed in the marketplace. When resources in the environment are limited, like consumers in the marketplace, organisms and businesses will compete. Those that can maximize their efficiency at production will succeed over those that cannot. Let's look at how the principles of economics determine production costs and the role that these costs play in the success of a business. (Complete the production costs tutorial before you proceed).
Part I
In this tutorial you learned about different types of costs faced by a business. Organisms face similar costs, and require common elements as building blocks: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. Plant tissues are composed primarily of long chains of sugars called cellulose. They have specialized machinery, chloroplasts, that capture energy from sunlight using pigments such as chlorophyll, and use it to build sugars in a process called photosynthesis. These sugars are used in many places throughout the plant, both structurally and metabolically.
Visit the Missouri Botanical Garden site http://www.mbgnet.net/bioplants/main.html for more information about the basic structure and function of plants. Read the contents on each link found at the left-hand side of the Web page, paying special attention to the content in "Plant Adaptations." After you view these resources provided on plant biology, apply the following economic terms to plants for the first part of this Case Assignment:
Short-run costs
What is a fixed cost for a plant? What are variable costs?
Long-run costs
What plant structures should be considered a part of its long-run costs?
What plant structures are indivisible inputs (an input that cannot be scaled down to produce a small quantity of output)?
Part II
Now apply the questions above to an extinct business: choose either Kodak or Blockbuster. Do some independent research and use the production cost tutorial to address these questions:
What were the fixed and variable costs for this business?
What were some of their long-run costs, including divisible inputs?
Who were their competitors?
What were the factors that contributed to the decision to shut down production?
In the natural world, invasive species commonly displace species of organisms. Provide one example of an invasive species in your region that has imposed new competition to a native species and draw parallels between this example and the extinct business that you chose.
Assignment Expectations
You are provided with many scholarly references to complete this assignment. Include a References section that lists these and any additional sources you used (refer to the Background page). For any additional research you are required to do to complete your assignment, please use scholarly references such as a peer-reviewed journal article or a government-sponsored or university-sponsored website. As you read through your sources, take notes from your sources and then write your paper in your own words, describing what you have learned from your research. Direct quotes should be limited and must be designated by quotation marks. Paraphrased ideas must give credit to the original author, for example (Murray, 2014). Direct copying from "homework help" websites will not receive credit.
For this Case Assignment, answer all questions using full sentences and use Part I and Part II as your headings to organize your paper. The length of this assignment should be 2-3 pages.
Under each main section, use subtitles to organize your answers to the questions. For example:
Part I: Economics of Plant Production and Photosynthesis
Short-Run Costs
Long-Run Costs
Part II: Case Study: Production Costs for Kodak
Costs
Competition and the Shut-Down Decision
Extinctions: Parallels in the Business World