Match List I with List II and select the correct answer from the codes given below :List IList II(a) Participation(1) Value Decision(b) Novel and Unstructured(2) Group Decision(c) Organizational Functioning(3) Non-programmed Decision(d) Expression of Preference(4) Programmed Decision

The correct matching is a-2, b-3, c-4, d-1.Participation of several members in reaching a choice makes a group decision (a-2).Novel and unstructured problems, for which no rule exists, call for non-programmed decisions (b-3), in Herbert Simon's terms.The routine, repetitive decisions of everyday organisational functioning are programmed decisions (c-4), handled by standing rules and procedures.A decision that expresses a preference about ends is a value decision (d-1), as against a factual one.Option A reverses the programmed and non-programmed pairings, and options C and D place participation elsewhere.

Introduction to Public Administration Questions and Answers

Q: Find the odd one out :

The key gives Structural-functional Theory as the odd one out.Human relations theory, the socio-economic (humanistic) view of the worker and humanistic theory belong to one family in the study of administration: they treat the organisation as a set of people with social and psychological needs, and they grew from the Hawthorne studies and later work on motivation. Structural-functional theory is different in origin. It comes from sociology (Talcott Parsons and others) and explains institutions by the functions their structures perform for the whole system.The question does not say what the grouping is. I could not find a source that lists these four theories together, so the key is kept by that reading, not by a quoted classification.

Q: College education is an example of :

College education is an example of pre-service training.Pre-service (pre-entry) training is the general and professional education a person receives before joining the service. University and college education builds the knowledge and abilities on which later job-specific training rests, so in the classification of training it is pre-service.In-service training is given to those already employed, mid-career training to officials partway through their careers, and foundational training is the common orientation given to new recruits after selection, for example at a national academy. College education comes before any of these.

Q: Who were the Cameralists and what was their primary focus during 16th to the 18th century in Europe ?

The Cameralists were German and Austrian professors and administrators studying civil service.Cameralism (from Kammer, the royal treasury chamber) flourished in the German states and Austria from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Its scholars and officials studied the systematic management of the state's finances and administration and the training of civil servants, and chairs of cameral science were set up in German universities.It was a European movement, so the options naming Chinese administrators, Indian priests and Egyptian bureaucrats are wrong.

Q: In the administrative hierarchy, what is the special connotation of the term "department" ?

A department is the largest and highest unit below the chief executive.In the hierarchy of a government's administrative organisation, the department is the primary unit directly under the chief executive, headed by a minister or secretary and responsible for a major function. Below it come bureaus, divisions, branches and sections.The smallest unit is the section, not the department; territorial subdivisions are field units such as districts; and academic divisions of a university are a different, non-governmental use of the word.

Q: During which of the following stage scholars claimed that public administration is a science ?

The claim belongs to Stage II, the Principles of Administration (roughly 1927 to 1937).This phase opened with W. F. Willoughby's Principles of Public Administration (1927), which argued that administration has principles that can be discovered and applied as in any science. Gulick and Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration (1937) and the POSDCORB formula mark its peak.Stage I (Wilson, Goodnow) was about separating administration from politics, not about science. Stage III, the era of challenge, is when Simon and Dahl attacked those principles as mere proverbs and questioned the claim to be a science. Stage IV, the crisis of identity, is the period when the discipline was unsure whether it belonged to political science or management.

Q: What is the common man's notion of an administrator ?

To the common man an administrator is someone in a high position exercising control.In everyday usage the word means the person at the top who directs others, takes decisions and holds authority over an office: the 'boss' rather than the clerk. Textbooks start from this popular notion before giving the technical meaning of administration as the co-operative effort of everyone in an organisation.Technical skills or technical knowledge describe a specialist or technician, not the popular image of an administrator. Performing operational activities describes the operative staff who carry out the work, which is the opposite of the control the common man associates with an administrator.

Q: What does Dwight Waldo emphasize about the evolution of public administration ?

Waldo stressed that public administration cannot shy away from substantive issues confronting society.In The Administrative State (1948) Waldo argued that administration is bound up with political theory and values, and in 1968 he convened the Minnowbrook Conference, which launched the New Public Administration with its demand for relevance, values and social equity. For him the discipline had to deal with what government does for society, not only with how it does it.Focusing solely on administrative processes is the narrow view he criticised. Calling society's problems irrelevant contradicts him directly. Waldo did write historically, but he did not reduce the discipline to historical analysis.

Q: According to the Machinery of Government Committee (1919) report, what are the two alternatives for determining and allocating the functions of departments ?

The two alternatives were distribution according to the nature of the service or according to the persons or classes to be dealt with.The Machinery of Government Committee in Britain, chaired by Lord Haldane, compared two ways of allocating work among departments: by the service to be rendered (health, education, defence) or by the class of persons served (children, the poor, ex-servicemen). It preferred the first, organisation by service or function, because the second would scatter the same kind of work across several departments.Geographic regions, government agencies, the budget, economic sectors and political parties were not the alternatives the committee set out, so the other three options each replace one or both of its terms.

41.

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer from the codes given below :

List I	List II
(a) Participation	(1) Value Decision
(b) Novel and Unstructured	(2) Group Decision
(c) Organizational Functioning	(3) Non-programmed Decision
(d) Expression of Preference	(4) Programmed Decision

A.a-1, b-4, c-3, d-2
B.a-2, b-3, c-4, d-1
C.a-4, b-1, c-3, d-2
D.a-3, b-4, c-2, d-1

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2023, SET Exam - 2023,

Answer: B

The correct matching is a-2, b-3, c-4, d-1.

Participation of several members in reaching a choice makes a group decision (a-2).
Novel and unstructured problems, for which no rule exists, call for non-programmed decisions (b-3), in Herbert Simon's terms.
The routine, repetitive decisions of everyday organisational functioning are programmed decisions (c-4), handled by standing rules and procedures.
A decision that expresses a preference about ends is a value decision (d-1), as against a factual one.

Option A reverses the programmed and non-programmed pairings, and options C and D place participation elsewhere.

Discuss in Forum

42.

Find the odd one out :

A.Human Relations Theory
B.Socio-Economic Theory
C.Humanistic Theory
D.Structural-functional Theory

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2023, SET Exam - 2023,

Answer: D

The key gives Structural-functional Theory as the odd one out.

Human relations theory, the socio-economic (humanistic) view of the worker and humanistic theory belong to one family in the study of administration: they treat the organisation as a set of people with social and psychological needs, and they grew from the Hawthorne studies and later work on motivation. Structural-functional theory is different in origin. It comes from sociology (Talcott Parsons and others) and explains institutions by the functions their structures perform for the whole system.

The question does not say what the grouping is. I could not find a source that lists these four theories together, so the key is kept by that reading, not by a quoted classification.

Discuss in Forum

43.

College education is an example of :

A.In-service training
B.Mid-career training
C.Pre-service training
D.Foundational training

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2023, SET Exam - 2023,

Answer: C

College education is an example of pre-service training.

Pre-service (pre-entry) training is the general and professional education a person receives before joining the service. University and college education builds the knowledge and abilities on which later job-specific training rests, so in the classification of training it is pre-service.

In-service training is given to those already employed, mid-career training to officials partway through their careers, and foundational training is the common orientation given to new recruits after selection, for example at a national academy. College education comes before any of these.

Discuss in Forum

44.

Who of the following has restricted the use of term administration to the activities of the administrative branch only ?

A.Willoughby
B.L.D. White
C.Luther Gulick
D.Marshal Dimock

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2024, SET Exam - 2024,

Answer: A

The writer who confined administration to the administrative branch is Willoughby.

W. F. Willoughby distinguished two senses of the word. In its broadest sense administration covers the work of all three branches of government; in its narrowest sense, the one he used for the study, it means only the operations of the administrative (executive) branch.

L. D. White and Marshall Dimock took the wider, integral view of administration as all the operations directed at carrying out public policy, and Luther Gulick is known for POSDCORB and the managerial view rather than for this restriction.

Discuss in Forum

45.

Who were the Cameralists and what was their primary focus during 16th to the 18th century in Europe ?

A.Chinese administrators studying public administration
B.Indian priests practicing public administration
C.German and Austrian professors and administrators studying civil service
D.Egyptian bureaucrats specializing in pyramid construction

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2024, SET Exam - 2024,

Answer: C

The Cameralists were German and Austrian professors and administrators studying civil service.

Cameralism (from Kammer, the royal treasury chamber) flourished in the German states and Austria from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Its scholars and officials studied the systematic management of the state's finances and administration and the training of civil servants, and chairs of cameral science were set up in German universities.

It was a European movement, so the options naming Chinese administrators, Indian priests and Egyptian bureaucrats are wrong.

Discuss in Forum

46.

In the administrative hierarchy, what is the special connotation of the term "department" ?

A.The smallest unit below the chief executive
B.The territorial subdivisions of a country
C.The largest and highest unit below the chief executive
D.The academic divisions in universities

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2024, SET Exam - 2024,

Answer: C

A department is the largest and highest unit below the chief executive.

In the hierarchy of a government's administrative organisation, the department is the primary unit directly under the chief executive, headed by a minister or secretary and responsible for a major function. Below it come bureaus, divisions, branches and sections.

The smallest unit is the section, not the department; territorial subdivisions are field units such as districts; and academic divisions of a university are a different, non-governmental use of the word.

Discuss in Forum

47.

During which of the following stage scholars claimed that public administration is a science ?

A.Stage I-Politics-Administration Dichotomy
B.Stage II-Principles of Administration
C.Stage III-Era of Challenge
D.Stage IV-Crisis of Identity

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2025, SET Exam - 2025,

Answer: B

The claim belongs to Stage II, the Principles of Administration (roughly 1927 to 1937).

This phase opened with W. F. Willoughby's Principles of Public Administration (1927), which argued that administration has principles that can be discovered and applied as in any science. Gulick and Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration (1937) and the POSDCORB formula mark its peak.

Stage I (Wilson, Goodnow) was about separating administration from politics, not about science. Stage III, the era of challenge, is when Simon and Dahl attacked those principles as mere proverbs and questioned the claim to be a science. Stage IV, the crisis of identity, is the period when the discipline was unsure whether it belonged to political science or management.

Discuss in Forum

48.

What is the common man's notion of an administrator ?

A.Someone with technical skills
B.Someone in a high position exercising control
C.Someone performing operational activities
D.Someone with technical knowledge

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2025, SET Exam - 2025,

Answer: B

To the common man an administrator is someone in a high position exercising control.

In everyday usage the word means the person at the top who directs others, takes decisions and holds authority over an office: the 'boss' rather than the clerk. Textbooks start from this popular notion before giving the technical meaning of administration as the co-operative effort of everyone in an organisation.

Technical skills or technical knowledge describe a specialist or technician, not the popular image of an administrator. Performing operational activities describes the operative staff who carry out the work, which is the opposite of the control the common man associates with an administrator.

Discuss in Forum

49.

What does Dwight Waldo emphasize about the evolution of public administration ?

A.Public administration should focus solely on administrative processes
B.Substantive issues confronting society are irrelevant to public administration
C.Public administration cannot shy away from substantive issues confronting society
D.The discipline of public administration is primarily concerned with historical analysis

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2025, SET Exam - 2025,

Answer: C

Waldo stressed that public administration cannot shy away from substantive issues confronting society.

In The Administrative State (1948) Waldo argued that administration is bound up with political theory and values, and in 1968 he convened the Minnowbrook Conference, which launched the New Public Administration with its demand for relevance, values and social equity. For him the discipline had to deal with what government does for society, not only with how it does it.

Focusing solely on administrative processes is the narrow view he criticised. Calling society's problems irrelevant contradicts him directly. Waldo did write historically, but he did not reduce the discipline to historical analysis.

Discuss in Forum

50.

According to the Machinery of Government Committee (1919) report, what are the two alternatives for determining and allocating the functions of departments ?

A.Distribution according to geographic regions or distribution according to the nature of the service
B.Distribution according to the nature of the service or distribution according to persons or classes to be dealt with
C.Distribution according to government agencies or distribution according to the budget
D.Distribution according to economic sectors or distribution according to political parties

Exam Year(s)

MH SET - 2025, SET Exam - 2025,

Answer: B

The two alternatives were distribution according to the nature of the service or according to the persons or classes to be dealt with.

The Machinery of Government Committee in Britain, chaired by Lord Haldane, compared two ways of allocating work among departments: by the service to be rendered (health, education, defence) or by the class of persons served (children, the poor, ex-servicemen). It preferred the first, organisation by service or function, because the second would scatter the same kind of work across several departments.

Geographic regions, government agencies, the budget, economic sectors and political parties were not the alternatives the committee set out, so the other three options each replace one or both of its terms.

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