Administrative Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The answer is the organism.

This is the first proposition of Abraham Maslow's paper A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), where he says that the integrated wholeness of the organism must be one of the foundation stones of motivation theory. Maslow meant that it is the whole individual who is motivated, not a separate part such as the stomach: a hungry person is hungry as a whole, and every faculty is affected. His hierarchy of needs is built on that premise.

The organisation, the society and nature are the settings in which a person acts. Maslow's starting point was the individual human being as a unified whole, so none of those is the term he used.

Answer: A

The three activities are intelligence, design, choice.

Herbert Simon divided decision-making into three phases: the intelligence activity of searching the environment for occasions that call for a decision, the design activity of inventing and analysing possible courses of action, and the choice activity of selecting one of them.

Each wrong option swaps one of Simon's terms: 'problem' for design, 'opinion' for intelligence, or 'environment' for choice. None of those is one of the three phases.

Answer: A

The correct code is (3) (1) (4) (2).

• (a) A decision tree is a graphic method that lays out the alternative courses of action and their outcomes as branches.
• (b) Simulation is a trial and error approach to complex problems, testing alternatives on a model instead of in reality.
• (c) The Delphi technique collects expert opinion through repeated anonymous questionnaires, so it avoids face to face communication.
• (d) Rensis Likert's link-pin concept links overlapping work groups, each manager being a member of two groups, and is matched here with group decision making.

Only option A gives decision tree (3), simulation (1) and Delphi (4); every other code puts at least one of these three in the wrong place.

Answer: C

The one that is not a prakriti is Senapati.

Kautilya's Arthashastra lists seven prakritis, the constituent elements of the state (saptanga theory): svamin (the king), amatya (ministers), janapada (territory and people), durga (fort), kosha (treasury), danda (army or force) and mitra (ally).

Svamin, kosh and amatya are all among the seven. The army appears as danda, but the commander-in-chief (senapati) is an official, not one of the seven elements of the state.

Answer: D

Weber's model of bureaucracy is best in a stable environment.

Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy rests on fixed rules, a hierarchy of offices, written records and impersonal, routine procedures. These give precision, predictability and continuity, which work well where the tasks and the environment change little.

Critics point out that the same features make it rigid. It is not readily adaptable to changing conditions, it does not encourage innovation, and later studies showed it is not universally suitable, especially in fast-changing or developing settings. That rules out the other three options.

Answer: A

The jurisdictional areas are generally ordered by rules.

The first characteristic of bureaucracy in Max Weber's account is the principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas, which are generally ordered by rules, that is, by laws or administrative regulations. The official duties, the authority to give commands and the qualifications for each post are all laid down by such rules.

Weber's own wording makes 'rules' the general term, with laws and administrative regulations as its forms. A constitution and a legislature are sources of some rules, but Weber does not name either as what orders the jurisdictional areas.

Answer: C

The experiment is known as ventilation therapy.

In the interviewing programme of the Hawthorne studies (1928-1930), more than twenty thousand workers were interviewed, at first with set questions and then non-directively, letting them talk freely about whatever they liked or disliked. Workers' morale rose simply because they could voice their feelings, and textbooks in public administration describe this release of feelings as a 'ventilation' or catharsis effect.

The other phases tested different things. The illumination experiments varied lighting, the relay assembly test room studied a small group under changed working conditions, and the bank wiring observation room studied informal group norms on output. None of them was built on free expression of likes and dislikes.

Answer: A

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

Douglas McGregor wrote that the central principle derived from Theory Y is integration: creating conditions in which members of the organisation can achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts towards the success of the enterprise. So integration is the key process of management under Theory Y (A).

The reason (R) is McGregor's own definition of integration, the condition in which individual goals and organisational goals are achieved together. It is not just a true statement beside (A); it explains why integration is central. That rules out the options treating (R) as false or as unrelated.

Answer: A

The correct code is (4) (3) (1) (2).

• (a) Frederick Taylor received the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal for his work on high-speed tool steel.
• (b) Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law (1891) was Max Weber's habilitation thesis.
• (c) Chester Barnard, author of The Functions of the Executive, is called the spiritual father of the social system school.
• (d) That leaves Herbert Simon for 'a scientists' scientist'.

Pairs (a), (b) and (c) alone fix the code: only option A gives Taylor (4), Weber (3) and Barnard (1). The other codes attach the Elliott Cresson medal to Barnard or Weber, or the Roman agrarian thesis to Taylor.

Answer: D

The hypothesis is that of Douglas McGregor.

In The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), McGregor argued that every managerial act rests on assumptions, generalisations and hypotheses about human behaviour, that is, on theory. He then set out the two contrasting sets of assumptions he called Theory X and Theory Y.

Herbert Simon is known for bounded rationality and decision-making, F.W. Riggs for the ecological and prismatic models of comparative administration, and Chester Barnard for cooperative systems and the acceptance theory of authority. None based his work on the claim that every managerial act rests on theory.