Corduroy is fast establishing itself as this year's fabric, While the ribbed cotton itself provides utilitarian tenacity, texture and warmth. it is the fabric's long held associations may provide a hint to its current revival as a fabric for all seasons.
It is Corduroy's link with the good breeding and country living that made it an essential ingredient in the gentleman's wardrobe along with Wellington boots and decent woolly. It combines the comfortable no-nonsense appeal of cotton with the perfectly correct luxury finish of velvet. Corduroy has the ability to appear either supremely sophisticated or rough and ready.
When the writer refers to corduroy's 'utilitarian tenacity' he means that
Answer: B
Correct answer: It is useful because it is durable
Utilitarian means serving a practical purpose and tenacity means the ability to hold together and last. Taken together the phrase says the cloth is useful because it wears well; it says nothing about cost, fashion or laundering.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Organisations are institutions in which members compete for status and power. They compete for resource of the organisation, for example finance to expand their own departments, for career advancement and for power to control the activities of others. In pursuit of these aims, grouped are formed and sectional interests emerge. As a result, policy decisions may serve the ends of political and career systems rather than those of the concern. In this way, the goals of the organisation may be displaced in favour of sectional interests and individual ambition. These preoccupations sometimes prevent the emergence of organic systems. Many of the electronic firms in the study had recently created research and development departments employing highly qualified and well paid scientists and technicians. Their high pay and expert knowledge were sometimes seen as a threat to the established order of rank, power and privilege. Many senior managers had little knowledge of technicality and possibilities of new developments and electronics. Some felt that close cooperation with the experts in an organic system would reveal their ignorance and show their experience was now redundant.
The theme of the passage is
Answer: D
Correct answer: Emergence of sectional interests in organizations
The passage traces one movement throughout: members compete, groups form, sectional interests emerge, and the goals of the organisation are displaced in favour of sectional interests and individual ambition. Groupism and individual ambition are stages in that account, and the senior managers' frustration is one illustration of its effects.
Please log in or register to report this question.
"Organic system" as related to the organization implies its
Answer: B
Correct answer: Growth with input from science and technology
The passage introduces organic systems immediately alongside the new research and development departments and the highly qualified and well paid scientists and technicians, and closes by describing close cooperation with the experts in an organic system. The term is therefore tied to bringing scientific expertise into the working of the firm.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Policy decision in organization would involve
Answer: C
Correct answer: Keeping in view the larger objectives of the organizations
The passage's complaint is that policy decisions may serve the ends of political and career systems rather than those of the concern. If that is the fault, then a proper policy decision is one that keeps the concern's own ends in view. Attracting qualified personnel is something the firms had already done, and it is described as the source of the trouble rather than as the remedy.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The author makes out a case for
Answer: A
Correct answer: Organic system
The passage says sectional preoccupations sometimes prevent the emergence of organic systems and then shows what is lost when senior managers avoid cooperating with the experts. The organic system is the thing being obstructed, and so the thing the author is arguing for; research and development departments already exist in the firms described.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The author presents the senior managers as
Answer: A
Correct answer: Ignorant and incompetent
The passage says many senior managers had little knowledge of technicalities and that some feared cooperation would reveal their ignorance and show their experience was now redundant. Both halves of that sentence are in the passage's own words, and together they give the harsher of the two readings offered.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Mahatma Gandhi believed that industrialisation was no answer to the problems that plague the mass of India's poor and that villagers should be taught to be self-sufficient in food, weave their own cloth from cotton and eschew the glittering prizes that the 20th century so temptingly offers. Such an idyllic and rural paradise did not appear to those who inherited the reins of political power.
The meaning of ‘glittering prizes that the 20th century so temptingly offers’ is
Answer: C
Correct answer: Pursuit of a commercialised material culture
The glittering prizes are what Gandhi wanted villagers to eschew, and they are set against growing one's own food and weaving one's own cloth. What is being refused is therefore the material abundance of an industrial century, not the removal of poverty, which is the problem the passage says he was trying to solve.
Please log in or register to report this question.
The basis of 'an idyllic and rural paradise' is
Answer: B
Correct answer: Self sufficiency in food clothes and simplicity of the lifestyle
The passage defines the paradise by what Gandhi wanted villagers taught: to be self-sufficient in food, to weave their own cloth from cotton, and to turn away from the century's temptations. Industrialisation and the glittering prizes are exactly what the vision excludes.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Which one of the following best illustrates the relationship between the phrases:
(i) 'eschew the glittering prizes' and
(ii) 'idyllic and rural paradise'?
Answer: D
Correct answer: Unless you do (i), you cannot have (ii)
Eschewing the glittering prizes is the condition; the rural paradise is what follows from meeting it. The passage puts them in that order - villagers are to be self-sufficient and to eschew the prizes, and the result is called the idyllic paradise. They are therefore neither identical nor opposite: one is the means and the other the end.
Please log in or register to report this question.
Mahatma Gandhi's views opposed industrialisation of villages because
Answer: B
Correct answer: It would undermine self-sufficiency and destroy the beauty of life of the villager
The passage says Gandhi believed industrialisation was no answer to the problems that plague the mass of India's poor, and sets against it self-sufficiency in food and cloth and a life free of the century's temptations. What industrialisation threatens is therefore that self-sufficiency and that simplicity.
Please log in or register to report this question.
