Administrative Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: C

One feature of Weber's model of bureaucracy is continuity.

Max Weber described legal-rational bureaucracy as a continuous organisation of official functions bound by rules. The office exists apart from the person holding it, business is conducted on the basis of written files, and officials hold career posts, so the administration carries on without a break when individuals change.

Initiative (printed 'Inititative') and flexibility are what critics say the model lacks, since it works by fixed rules and hierarchy. Cooperation is not one of the features Weber listed: his model rests on rules, hierarchy, specialisation, impersonality and records.

Answer: C

POSDCORB is criticised for ignoring the substance of the subject.

Luther Gulick's acronym (1937) lists the executive's functions: planning, organising, staffing, directing, co-ordinating, reporting and budgeting. Critics such as Lewis Meriam pointed out that these are only the tools common to every agency. They say nothing about the substance an agency deals with, such as health, education or defence, and knowledge of that substance is just as necessary to administer it well.

Managerial techniques and processes are exactly what POSDCORB describes, and efficiency was the central value of Gulick and the classical school, so neither is what it ignores.

Answer: C

The classical theory ignored informal patterns.

The classical writers, among them Fayol, Gulick, Urwick, Mooney and Reiley, studied organisation as a formal structure built on principles such as hierarchy, unity of command, span of control and specialisation. They treated people as parts of that structure.

The Hawthorne studies of Elton Mayo and his colleagues showed that workers form informal groups with their own norms, leaders and communication, which shape output as much as the formal design. That discovery is the human relations school's main criticism of the classical theory. Formal structure, managerial techniques and principles of organisation are what the classical theory concentrated on, so they cannot be what it ignored.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).

Hierarchy is treated as a universal feature of organisation: Mooney and Reiley called the scalar principle universal, found wherever people are organised.

The reason given explains why. An organisation is a group of people among whom work is divided, and once work is divided someone must assign the parts, direct them and bring them together. That is done through graded levels of authority, which is hierarchy. Since the division of work is what makes hierarchy necessary, (R) is the explanation of (A), ruling out option B, and options C and D are wrong because both statements are true.

Answer: D

The answer is (1), (2), (3) and (4), all four writers.

F.W. Taylor rejected unity of command with his functional foremanship, in which a worker took orders from eight specialist foremen. Herbert Simon, in The Proverbs of Administration (1946), showed that the principle contradicts specialisation, since an expert must be able to give orders in his field to people who report to someone else.

Standard Indian textbooks also list Catheryna Seckler-Hudson and John D. Millett among its critics, because in practice specialists and field offices answer to more than one superior. Every code includes Taylor, so the question turns on the others, and each code that leaves out (2), (3) or (4) is incomplete.

Answer: A

The essence of the scalar principle is unity of command.

The scalar principle, Mooney and Reiley's scalar process and Fayol's scalar chain, arranges an organisation in a graded chain of authority from the top to the bottom. Each member stands in one line and receives orders from the one superior directly above him, which is what unity of command means. A chain in which a person had several masters would no longer be a single scalar line.

Span of control is a separate principle about how many subordinates one superior can supervise. Communication travels along the chain, and co-ordination is the purpose the hierarchy serves, but neither is the defining feature of the chain itself.

Answer: B

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

• Chester Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (1938): the zone of indifference, the range of orders a subordinate accepts without questioning them.
• Henri Fayol: the gangplank, a bridge allowing people at the same level in different chains to deal directly.
• Herbert Simon: bounded rationality, the idea that decision-makers satisfice because their knowledge and time are limited.
• Chris Argyris: Organization and Innovation (1965).

Option A gives Barnard Argyris's book, option C gives him Fayol's gangplank and option D gives him Simon's bounded rationality, so only B matches every pair.

Answer: B

The odd one out is structural theory.

Structural theory is the classical approach of Gulick, Urwick and Fayol, which looks at an organisation as a formal structure of positions and authority designed by principles, and treats the people in it as interchangeable parts.

The other three put people and their setting at the centre. Human relations theory, from the Hawthorne studies, stresses informal groups and social needs. Humanistic theory, in the work of Maslow, McGregor and Argyris, stresses self-actualisation and the fit between the individual and the organisation. A socio-economic approach looks at the social and economic environment in which people work. Structure without people is what sets option B apart.

Answer: D

The gangplank refers to level jumping.

Fayol's scalar chain makes communication travel up the line of authority and down again. For people at the same level in different departments that is slow, so Fayol allowed a direct link between them, with their superiors' consent and keeping them informed. This bridge across the chain, which jumps the levels in between, is the gangplank.

Discipline, initiative and equity are three other entries among Fayol's fourteen principles of management. Discipline is obedience to agreements, initiative is freedom to propose and carry out plans, and equity is fair treatment. None of them is the gangplank.

Answer: B

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

• Frederick Taylor: reward theory, since his differential piece-rate system pays workers who reach the standard task at a higher rate.
• Abraham Maslow: need theory, the hierarchy of needs from physiological needs to self-actualisation.
• Chris Argyris: integration of the individual and the organisation, the theme of his work on how formal organisations frustrate mature personalities.
• Frederick Herzberg: the two-factor (motivation-hygiene) theory.

Only options B and D give Herzberg the two-factor theory, and of those only B gives Maslow need theory, so A, C and D are out.