Fill in the blank: Setting (blank) objectives, may improve a firm's reputation as well as help it recruit, motivate and retain staff. On the other hand, doing so may impose additional
(blank) on the firm.

Aproduction line has three machines a, b, and c, with reliabilities of .96, .86, and .85, respectively. the machines are arranged so that if one breaks down, the others must shut down. engineers are weighing two alternative designs for increasing the line’s reliability. plan 1 involves adding an identical backup line, and plan 2 involves providing a backup for each machine. in either case, three machines (a, b, and c) would be used with reliabilities equal to the original three. a. compute overall system reliability under plan 1. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability b. compute overall system reliability under plan 2. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability c. which plan will provide the higher reliability? plan2plan1

Swathmore clothing corporation grants its customers 30 days' credit. the company uses the allowance method for its uncollectible accounts receivable. during the year, a monthly bad debt accrual is made by multiplying 3% times the amount of credit sales for the month. at the fiscal year-end of december 31, an aging of accounts receivable schedule is prepared and the allowance for uncollectible accounts is adjusted accordingly. at the end of 2012, accounts receivable were dollar 586.000 and the allowance account had a credit balance of dollar 50,000. accounts receivable activity for 2013 was as follows: the company's controller prepared the following aging summary of year-end accounts receivable: prepare a summary journal entry to record the monthly bad debt accrual and the write-offs during the year. (if no entry is required for a particular event, select "no journal entry required" in the first account field.) prepare the necessary year-end adjusting entry for bad debt expense. (if no entry is required for an event, select "no journal entry required" in the first account field.) what is total bad debt expense for 2013? calculate the amount of accounts receivable that would appear in the 2013 balance sheet?

1. consider a two-firm industry. firm 1 (the incumbent) chooses a level of output qı. firm 2 (the potential entrant) observes qı and then chooses its level of output q2. the demand for the product is p 100 q, where q is the total output sold by the two firms which equals qi +q2. assume that the marginal cost of each firm is zero. a) find the subgame perfect equilibrium levels of qi and q2 keeping in mind that firm 1 chooses qi first and firm 2 observes qi and chooses its q2. find the profits of the two firms-n1 and t2- in the subgame perfect equilibrium. how do these numbers differ from the cournot equilibrium? b) for what level of qi would firm 2 be deterred from entering? would a rational firm 1 have an incentive to choose this level of qi? which entry condition does this market have: blockaded, deterred, or accommodated? now suppose that firm 2 has to incur a fixed cost of entry, f> 0. c) for what values of f will entry be blockaded? d) find out the entry deterring level of q, denoted by q1', a expression for firm l's profit, when entry is deterred, as a function of f. for what values of f would firm 1 use an entry deterring strategy?