XAT DECISION MAKING Question 2008
Questions 1 to 4: Read the following
situations and
choose the best possible alternative.
1. Seema was a finance manager in an MNC
and felt that gender discrimination at the workplace hampered her
career growth. Frustrated, she quit the job and started a company. While
starting her company, Seema decided that she would haveequal proportion of
males and females. Over the next six years, Seema emerged as a
very successful entrepreneur and expanded her business to eight
locations in the country. However, Seema recently started facing an
ethical dilemma because she realized that female employees were not
willing to travel across cities and work late hours, as the work required
them to do. Male employees did not hesitate undertaking
such work. Seema started to feel the
pressure of reducing the proportion of female employees. On
the other hand, she is aware that
equal representation was one of the strongest reasons
for her to have founded the company. What should she do as a
conscientious female entrepreneur?
A.See if unwilling female employees
could be given assignments which do not require travel and involve
less overtime.
B.Reduce the number of female
employees, as it is a business requirement. She should not
let anything affect her business.
C. Let the status quo continue.
D.Henceforth hire only male
employees.
E.She should close the business.
2. You, a recruitment manager, are
interviewing Mayank, a hard- working young man, who has problems in
speaking fluent English. He has studied in vernacular medium schools
and colleges. Amongst the following options, what would you choose to do, if
your company has vacancies?
A. I would hire him at all costs.
B. I would hire him for the job he is
good at, and
provide training in other areas.
C. I would hire him for production or
finance job
but not for marketing job, which
requires good
communication skills.
D. I would ask him to improve his
communication
skills and come back again.
E. I would not hire him as he might
be a burden
on organisation because of his poor
communication skills.
3. The city of Nagar has a population of
10 million,
2 millions amongst whom are rich, 3
million poor and 5 million belong to the middle class.
Saundarya Cosmetics manufactured and
sold beauty product to the rich class at a premium
price. Its products were very popular
with customers. Many people from the middle and poor
segments of the population aspired to
buy these products but could not afford because of the high prices.
Of late, sales growth has been stagnating in the rich segment. Which of the following is
the best option for Saundarya Cosmetics to maximize long-term
profits?
A.Sell the same products at lower
prices to middle and poor classes.
B.Sell similar products, of different
quality standards with different brand names, to middle classes and
poor classes.
C.Sell its products under different
brand names to middle and poor classes.
D.Continue to target rich only and
hope that
today’s middle class would be
tomorrow’s rich
class.
E.Target middle class as it is the
largest segment
and forget about the rich.
4. A database software manufacturing
company found out that a product it has launched recently
had a few bugs. The product has
already been bought by more than a million customers. The
company realized that bugs could cost
its customers significantly. However, if it informs the
customers about the bug, it feared
losing credibility. What would be the most ethical option
for the company?
A.Apologize and fix up the bug for
all customers even if it has to incur losses.
B.Do not tell customers about bugs
and remove only when customers face problems,
even if it
means losses for the customers.
C.Keep silent and do nothing.
D.Keep silent but introduce and
improved product
that is bug-free at the earliest.
E.Take the product off the mark and
apologize to
customers.
Read the following caselet and choose
the best
alternative (Question 5 to 10):
Mr. Rajiv Singhal, Chairman of the
Board of Directors of Loha India Ltd., (a steel manufacturing company) had
just been visited by several other directors of the company. The
directors were upset with recent actions of the company president, Mr.
Ganesh Thakur. They demanded
that the board consider firing the
president. Mr. Thakur, recently appointed as president, had
undertaken to solve some of the management-employees problems by
dealing directly with the individuals, as often as possible. The company did
not have a history of strikes or any other
form of collective action and was
considered to have good work culture. However, Mr. Thakur felt that by
dealing directly with individuals, he could portray the
management’s concern for the employees. An important initiative of
Mr. Thakur was to negotiate wages of the supervisors with
each supervisor. In these negotiation
meetings, he would not involve anyone else, including the Personnel
Department which reported to him, so as to take an unbiased decision.
After negotiation, a wage contract
would be drawn up for each supervisor. This, he felt, would recognize and
reward the better performers. Mr. Thakur successfully implemented
the process for most of the
supervisors, except those working in night shift with that of supervisors
of the day shift. For several days Ram Lal, a night shift supervisor,
had
been trying to seek and appointment
with Mr. Thakur about his wages. He was disgruntled, not only over
his failure to see the president, but also over the lack of discussions
about his wage contract prior to its being effected. As a family man with
six dependents, he felt his
weekly wage should be higher than
that granted to him. Last Thursday afternoon Ram Lal stopped by
the president’s office and tried to see him. Mr.Thakur’s secretary
refused his request on the grounds that Mr. Thakur was busy. Infuriated,
Ram Lal stormed into the
president’s office and confronted the
startled Mr. Thakur, with stood up and told Ram Lal to get out of his
office and express his grievance through official channel. Ram Lal
took a swing at the president, who in
turn punched Ram Lal on the jaw and knocked him unconscious.
5. The most important causal factor
for this entire episode could be:
A.Trying to follow a divide-and-rule
policy in his
dealings with the supervisors.
B. Inconsistent dealings of Mr.
Thakur with
supervisors.
C.Paternalistic approach towards
mature
individuals in the organisation.
D. Legalistic approach to employee
problems.
E. Inadequate standards for
measurement of
supervisors’ on-job performance.
6. The situation with Mr.Lal could
have been avoided if Mr. Thakur had
1. Delegated the task of negotiation
of wage contracts for night shift employees to Personnel
department.
2. Created a process for supervisors
working the night shift so that they could have and
opportunity to interact with him.
3. Created an open door policy that
would have allowed employees to see him without any
appointment.
4. Postponed the decision of wage
revision for supervisors in the night shift for two months,
since supervisors were rotated on
different shifts after every two months. The option that best
arranges the above
managerial interventions in
decreasing order of organisational impact is:
A. 4, 2, 3, 1 B. 4, 3, 2, 1
C. 4, 3, 1, 2 D. 4, 1, 2, 3
E. 2, 3, 1, 4
(2008)
7. The most likely premise behind Mr.
Thakur’s
initiative regarding individualised
meetings with
the supervisors seems to be
A.Employee related policies should
allow scope for bargaining by employees.
B. Involvement of company’s president
in wage problems of employees will lead to a better goodwill towards
the management among the workers.
C. Individual agreements with
supervisors would allow the management to prevent any possiblecollective
action by the supervisors.
D.Management will be able to force
supervisors to accept lesser wages individually in this way.
E.He would be able to know who the
trouble makers in the plant are by interacting with the
supervisors.
8. Out of the following, which one
seems to be the most likely cause of Ram Lal’s grievance?
A.His disappointment with the
management’s philosophy of having one to one interaction as
the supervisors were in a way being
forced to accept the wage contracts.
B.His being in the night shift had
worked to his disadvantage as he could not interact with the
management regarding his problem.
C.He was not allowed to meet chairman
of the
board of directors of the company.
D.Employment in the night shift
forced him to stay
away from his family during the day
time and
therefore he could not interact with
his family
members much.
E. All of these.
9. Apart from the supervisors working
the night shift, executives of which department will have most
justified reasons to be disgruntled
with Mr. Thakur’s initiative?
1. Production department - for not
being consulted
regarding the behaviour of the
supervisors on
the shop floor.
2. Finance department - for not taken
into
confidence regarding the financial
consequences of the wage contracts.
3. Marketing department - for not
being consulted
on the likely impact of the wage
contracts on
the image of the company.
4. Quality control - for not being
able to give inputs
to Mr. Thakur on how to improve
quality of steel
making process.
5. Personnel department - for it was
their work to oversee wage policies for employees
and they had been ignored by Mr. Thakur.
A. 1 + 2 + 3 B. 1 + 4 + 5
C. 1 + 2 + 5 D. 1 + 3 + 4
E. 3 + 4 + 5
10. Which of the following managerial
attributes does
Mr. Thakur seem to lack the most?
A. Emotional instability under
pressure.
B. Proactive problem solving.
C. Ethical behaviour.
D. Emotional stability under
pressure.
E. Independent decision making.
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