Students are working on assignment that benefits from teamwork. Barry is highly
ID: 1205570 • Letter: S
Question
Students are working on assignment that benefits from teamwork. Barry is highly analytical person and Jane is more creative individual. Here is the chart representing how Barry and Jane complete the task:
Analytical: Barry 5 hours, Jane 7 hours Creative: Barry 8 hours and Jane 10 hours
Provide the absolute advantage completing analytical tasks and creative tasks.
Barry and Jane would like to finish the task that their instructor gave as soon as possible. Does Barry or Jane have a relative advantage in completing their tasks. If so, do you feel that they should focus on their competencies and split up the tasks to complete the assignment (assume the workload is 50% analytical and 50% creative).
Explanation / Answer
1. Barry has absolute advantage in completing analytical and creative task both because he requires less time in doing both the works as compared to Jane.
2. To find the relative advantage we need opportunity cost, so
Opportunity cost of Barry:
5 hours of analytical = 7 hours of creativity
1 hour of analytical = 7/5 or 1.4 hours of creativity
Therefore, opportunity cost of analytical work = 1.4 hours of creativity
Similarly, opportunity cost of 1 hour of creativity = 0.71 hour of analytical
Opportunity cost for Jane:
8 hours of analytical = 10 hours of creativity
1 hour of analytical = 1.25 hour of creativity
1 hour of creativity = 0.8 hour of analytical
Barry and Jane have relative advantage in doing one task. Both have to do that task in which they have less opportunity cost. So, Jane has to do analytical work while Barry has to do creativity work.
Yes, if they focus on these competencies and split up the tasks then they will able to complete the task efficiently.