Library Management Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The empirical approach is based on personal observation.

The empirical or case approach to management studies the experience of managers in actual situations. Its basic element is observation of what managers have done and what happened, from which lessons are drawn for similar situations in future.

Control, leading and command are functions a manager performs, described in theories such as Fayol's, not the basis of the empirical approach. The approach is defined by learning from observed experience.

Answer: C

The scalar chain is related to the chain of command.

Scalar chain is one of Henri Fayol's fourteen principles of management. It is the unbroken line of authority from the highest manager to the lowest rank, along which orders and communication pass. Fayol allowed a 'gang plank' for direct contact between people at the same level in urgent cases.

Teamwork corresponds to Fayol's principle of esprit de corps, working tenure to stability of tenure of personnel, and absenteeism is not one of his principles. Only chain of command describes the scalar chain.

Answer: B

The term MBO was first used by Peter Drucker.

Drucker introduced 'management by objectives' in The Practice of Management (1954). In MBO, managers and staff agree on objectives, and performance is judged by how far those objectives are met.

Henri Fayol set out the functions and principles of management, Frederick Taylor developed scientific management, and Luther Gulick coined the acronym POSDCORB for the functions of an executive. None of them introduced MBO.

Answer: C

Such a budget is a zero based budget.

In zero-based budgeting, every activity starts from zero each year: each programme must be justified afresh and costed from the ground up, without reference to what was spent the year before. It was popularised by Peter Pyhrr at Texas Instruments in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A line item budget lists expenditure heads and usually adjusts last year's figures. A lump-sum budget allocates one total amount, often based on past spending, and a performance budget links money to activities and measured outputs. Only zero-based budgeting ignores the previous year's expenditure.

Answer: C

The Hawthorne effect is related to studies of human behaviour.

The Hawthorne studies, carried out at the Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works near Chicago between 1924 and 1932 and associated with Elton Mayo, found that workers' productivity changed because they knew they were being observed and given attention, not only because of physical conditions such as lighting. The finding gave rise to the human relations school of management.

The studies were not about cost effectiveness, bureaucracy or operational management; their lasting result was about how people behave at work.

Answer: B

The work flow is Selection, ordering, processing, dissemination.

A library first selects the material it needs, then orders and acquires it, then processes it (accessioning, classification, cataloguing and preparing it for the shelves), and finally makes it available to users through circulation and other services.

Each of the other options breaks this logic: material cannot be processed before it is ordered, and it cannot be disseminated before it has been selected and processed.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true.

Performance measurement uses indicators such as use of the collection, user satisfaction and cost per transaction to show how well a library is doing. These data give managers evidence for decisions about budgets, services and staffing, so statement A is true.

Statement R is also true: right decisions taken at the right time help libraries and information centres reach their goals. Since neither statement is false, the options calling either false are wrong.

Answer: A

The correct matching is a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii.

• Henri Fayol set out the fourteen principles of management (iii).
• F.W. Taylor is the father of scientific management (iv).
• Abraham Maslow proposed the hierarchy of human needs (i).
• Douglas McGregor described Theory X and Theory Y (ii).

The other options misassign at least one, for example giving Fayol the hierarchy of needs or Taylor Theory X and Theory Y.

Answer: D

POSDCORB was coined by Luther Gulick and L. Urwick.

In their Papers on the Science of Administration (1937), Luther Gulick (with Lyndall Urwick) summed up the functions of the chief executive as Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting and Budgeting: POSDCORB.

Elton Mayo is associated with the Hawthorne studies, Chester Barnard (spelt 'Bernard' here) with the theory of cooperation and authority, and Lillian Gilbreth with time and motion study.

Answer: B

The theory was proposed by Maslow.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1943), from physiological and safety needs up to belonging, esteem and self-actualisation, is treated as the starting point of most later work on motivation at work.

Herzberg's two-factor theory, McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y, and the fusion process of Bakke and Argyris all came later and built on or responded to Maslow's ideas.