Administrative Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, from the lowest to the highest, is physiological needs, safety needs, affiliation (social or belonging) needs, esteem needs and self-actualisation needs. So the ascending sequence is (iv), (v), (ii), (i), (iii). The other options start with esteem needs or self-actualisation, which are higher needs that come only after the basic ones are met. Maslow's levels run from the lower, deficiency needs to the highest growth need: a person is expected to satisfy hunger and thirst first, then look for security, then for belonging, then for recognition, and last for fulfilment of potential.

Answer: B

The books are: L. D. White, Introduction to the Study of Public Administration (iv); W. F. Willoughby, Principles of Public Administration (i); L. Gulick and L. Urwick, Papers on the Science of Administration (ii); and Dwight Waldo, The Study of Public Administration (iii). So the code is (iv) (i) (ii) (iii). The other codes give Principles of Public Administration to White or to Gulick and Urwick, which does not fit.

Answer: C

The approaches go with these names: the ecological approach with F. W. Riggs (iii), the behavioural approach with Chris Argyris (i), the public choice approach with W. Niskanen (ii) and the systems approach with David Easton (iv). The code is (iii) (i) (ii) (iv). The other codes give the ecological approach to Argyris or to Niskanen, and the systems approach to Riggs, which are not their fields. Each name is tied to a book or a school: Riggs to the ecology of administration, Argyris to the interplay of personality and organisation, Niskanen to Bureaucracy and Representative Government, and Easton to the political system as an input-output model.

Answer: A

New Public Administration is not a source of New Public Management. New Public Administration, which came from the Minnowbrook conference of 1968, stresses social equity and values, while New Public Management of the 1980s and 1990s rests on public choice theory, managerialism and the market oriented economics of the Chicago school.

So public choice theory, managerialism and the Chicago school are real sources, and are wrong as answers to a question asking which is not a source.

Answer: A

Both statements are correct and the reason explains the assertion. New Public Administration openly rejected value neutrality, and it did so because its supporters held that value neutrality in public administration is impossible and that the discipline should take the side of the disadvantaged sections of society.

The option saying the reason is not the explanation is wrong since the rejection of neutrality follows directly from the reason. The options calling either statement false are wrong too.

Answer: B

The correct matching is Administration: The Art and Science of Organisation and Management with Albert Lepawsky, Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook Perspective with Frank Marini, Making Democracy Work with Robert D. Putnam, and Public Administration and Public Management with Jan-Erik Lane. This is code B, (iii) (i) (iv) (ii).

Options A, C and D give Putnam's book to another author or Marini's Minnowbrook volume to Lane. Putnam's book on civic traditions in Italy and Marini's Minnowbrook volume are the most reliable pairs.

Answer: B

The basis of influence in an informal organisation is the person. Informal groups arise from personal relations, and a member's influence rests on personal qualities such as skill, popularity and trust, not on a formal position.

Organisational position and authority are the bases of influence in a formal organisation. Closeness with higher people may help a member, but it is not the general basis. So the key accepts person.

Answer: D

The statement that hierarchy is the linchpin that locks the form is credited by the key to Earl Latham. A linchpin holds the wheel on the axle, and the saying treats hierarchy as the element that holds an organisation together. I could not trace the exact sentence to a source, so the key is followed.

Fayol, Urwick and Gulick, and Mooney and Reiley are classical writers who treated hierarchy as the scalar principle, but the key does not name them for this quotation.

Answer: D

Inspection is not a method of coordination according to the key. Planning, standardization of procedures and centralized housekeeping are ways in which the activities of different parts are brought into harmony, for example by common plans, common rules and common services.

Inspection is a method of control and checking whether work is done, and not of coordination, so it is the one that is not.

Answer: A

The statement that bureaucracy is an organization that maximises efficiency in administration, or an institutional method of organized social conduct in the interest of administrative efficiency, is by Peter M. Blau, in Bureaucracy in Modern Society.

Max Weber described the ideal type of bureaucracy by its features, not in this wording. Thomson and Alvin Gouldner wrote on the dysfunctions of bureaucracy and on patterns of industrial bureaucracy. The key credits the sentence to Blau.