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Read the following discussion/passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.
Of the several features of the Toyota Production System that have been widely studied, most important is the mode of governance of the shop - floor at Toyota. Work and inter - relations between workers are highly scripted in extremely detailed ‘operating procedures’ that have to be followed rigidly, without any deviation at Toyota. Despite such rule - bound rigidity, however, Toyota does not become a ‘command - control system’. It is able to retain the character of a learning organization
In fact, many observers characterize it as a community of scientists carrying out several small experiments simultaneously. The design of the operating procedure is the key. Every principal must find an expression in the operating procedure – that is how it has an effect in the domain of action. Workers on the shop - floor, often in teams, design the ‘operating procedure’ jointly with the supervisor through a series of hypothesis that are proposed and validated or refuted through experiments in action. The rigid and detailed ‘operating procedure’ specification throws up problems of the very minute kind; while its resolution leads to a reframing of the procedure and specifications. This inter - temporal change (or flexibility) of the specification (or operating procedure) is done at the lowest level of the organization; i.e. closest to the site of action.
One implication of this arrangement is that system design can no longer be rationally optimal and standardized across the organization. It is quite common to find different work norms in contiguous assembly lines, because each might have faced a different set of problems and devised different counter - measures to tackle it. Design of the coordinating process that essentially imposes the discipline that is required in large - scale complex manufacturing systems is therefore customized to variations in man - machine context of the site of action. It evolves through numerous points of negotiation throughout the organization. It implies then that the higher levels of the hierarchy do not exercise the power of the fiat in setting work rules, for such work rules are no longer a standard set across the whole organization.
It might be interesting to go through the basic Toyota philosophy that underlines its system designing practices. The notion of the ideal production system in Toyota embraces the following -‘the ability to deliver just - in - time (or on demand) a customer order in the exact specification demanded, in a batch size of one (and hence an infinite proliferation of variants, models and specifications), defect - free, without wastage of material, labour, energy or motion in a safe and (physically and emotionally) fulfilling production environment’. It did not embrace the concept of a standardized product that can be cheap by giving up variations. Preserving consumption variety was seen, in fact, as one mode of serving society. It is interesting to note that the articulation of the Toyota philosophy was made around roughly the same time that the Fordist system was establishing itself in the US automotive industry.
What can be best defended as the asset which Toyota model of production leverages to give the vast range of models in a defect - free fashion?
Which of the following can be best defended as a pre-condition for the Toyota type of production system to work?
What could be the best defence of the “different work norms in contiguous assembly lines”?
For the following questions answer them individually
The author has _________ his composition to the best of his _________; yet listen to it with a sympathetic ___________, O _____________ souls, and judge it.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
There is much difficulty ________ getting ________ this place and it is not possible to reach ___________ without the grace of the lord.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
_________ you have a doubt, why not go and verify? I shall be waiting in the shade ________ this banyan tree till you come back _________ me.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers that follow.
We can answer Fermi’s Paradox in two ways. Perhaps our current science over - estimates the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence evolving. Or, perhaps, evolved technical intelligence has some deep tendency to be self - limiting, even self - exterminating. After Hiroshima, some suggested that any aliens bright enough to make colonizing space ships would be bright enough to make thermonuclear bombs, and would use them on each other sooner or later.
I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual - reality narcissism. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot.
The fundamental problem is that an evolved mind must pay attention to indirect cues of biological fitness, rather than tracking fitness itself. This was a key insight of evolutionary psychology in the early 1990s; although evolution favours brains that tend to maximize fitness (as measured by numbers of great - grandkids), no brain has capacity enough to do so under every possible circumstance. As a result, brains must evolve shortcuts: fitness - promoting tricks, cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on an average, under ancestrally normal conditions. Technology is fairly good at controlling external reality to promote real biological fitness, but it’s even better at delivering fake fitness - subjective cues of survival and reproduction without the real - world effects.
Fitness - faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. With the invention of Xbox 360, people would rather play a high - resolution virtual ape in Peter Jackson’s King Kong than be a perfect – resolution real human. Teens today must find their way through a carnival of addictively fitness - faking entertainment products. The traditional staples of physical, mental and social development - athletics, homework dating - are neglected. The few young people with the self - control to pursue the meritocratic path often get distracted at the last minute.
Around 1900, most inventions concerned physical reality and in 2005 focus shifted to virtual entertainment. Freud’s pleasure principle triumphs over the reality principle. Today we narrow - cast human - interest stories to each other, rather than broadcasting messages of universal peace and progress to other star systems.
Maybe the bright aliens did the same. I suspect that a certain period of fitness - faking narcissism is inevitable after any intelligent life evolves. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species – to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures and less to their children.
Heritable variation in personality might allow some lineages to resist the Great Temptation and last longer. Some individuals and families may start with an “irrational” Luddite abhorrence of entertainment technology, and they may evolve ever more self - control, conscientiousness and pragmatism by combining the family values of the religious right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace. They wait patiently for our fitness - faking narcissism to go extinct. Those practical - minded breeders will inherit the Earth as like - minded aliens may have inherited a few other planets. When they finally achieve contacts, it will not be a meeting of novel - readers and game - players. It will be a meeting of dead - serious super - parents who congratulate each other on surviving not just the Bomb, but the Xbox.
Among the following options, which one represents the most important concern raised in the passage?
Which among the following would be the best possible explanation for the lack of contact between human beings and aliens?
Which of the following statements, if true, challenges the ideas presented in the passage the most?
I. Violent crime, including gang warfare for turf protection and expansion, co - exists in all technological advanced societies in spite of proliferation of fitness - faking technologies.
II. The technology to produce fitness - faking gadgets is guided by the government’s desire to control the minds of citizens and keep citizens away from engaging in trouble - making activities.
III. Countries that have the most advanced technology often are the ones that are at the forefront of preparedness for wars.
IV. The era of colonial expansion that was engaged in by the European nations after the renaissance would have never taken place had the technology to produce fitness - faking gadgets existed during those times.
V. Teenagers having access to technology, engage in more socializing away from parental supervision than those who do not have access to such technology.
For the following questions answer them individually
Nature is ___________ and unchangeable, and it is ___________ as to whether its hidden reasons and ___________ are __________to man or not.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Impressions are direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience; ideas are merely feeble copies of these original impressions.
Assuming the above statement is true, which of the statements logically follow from it?
I. Every impression leads to an idea.
II. Ideas must follow an antecedent impression.
III. The colour of the 2011 XAT test booklet right in front of a candidate is an impression to her, whereas the memory of the colour of her television set is an idea.
IV. If one was interested in origin of the idea of the colour of a television set, then one need to understand the impressions from which this idea was derived.
Media are not just passive channels of information. Not only do they supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the internet seems to be doing is chipping away our capacity for concentration. Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument presented above?
Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument presented in the previous question?
Randomness has to be dealt with successfully to ensure a better control over one’s life. Before one can deal effectively with randomness, one must acknowledge its existence.
The above statement implies the following except:
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us, leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
Which of the following is certainly not implied in the above verse?
Travelling is my hobby. Today in the Himalayas, as I drag my feet through the __________, I cannot but think of the same time last year when I was negotiating
the thick _________ of the Ganges delta or for that matter the time I spent with my children __________ about in the waters of the Arabian Sea.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
In spite of being perceived as ______ by all, the club members decided to ______ Arun, a skinny teenage with prominent ___________, as the member of the year, so that the whole affair would be __________ to Arun’s father who was recuperating after a serious illness.
The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:
Few sentences are given below continuously. Identify the best sequence of punctuations among the given option s. (The rule of capitalization at the beginning of sentences has been ignored in the passage given below). Note: the arrows in the options indicate text that would be within the punctuations.
a persons frames of perception and action are narrow in early stages of development focused on social membership and technical competence the early life of the organizations often is focused on survival and efficiency only later and rarely emphasizing process of
learning and development however in later stages both individual and organization become more concerned with the learning process itself the way the perceptions and practices are articulated and revised in interactions and how more people can be engaged in mutual learning and inquiry
Read the following sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order.
1. In law a fiduciary individual is someone who is entrusted with the power to act on behalf of and for the benefit of another.
2. Following the weight of corporate law and legal precedent, the director primacy model positions directors as autonomous fiduciaries, not agents.
3. The term fiduciary derives from the Latin fiducia, or trust, and the fiduciary is expected to act in good faith and honesty for the beneficiary’s interests.
4. A person who accepts the role of fiduciary in law must single - mindedly pursue the interests of his or her beneficiary, in this case the corporation, even when the latter cannot monitor or control the fiduciary’s behaviour.
Read the sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order.
a. Generally, it is unusual for a new problem in international relations to be considered without at the same time some international organization being developed to deal with it.
b. International society has, in spite of the diversity of culture and political systems, been progressively drawn closer together and become more unified.
c. Despite the fears and concerns of some governments that international organizations are increasing too fast and that they are a burden on their exchequers, they are still proliferating at a considerable rate.
d. People and their governments now look far beyond national frontiers and feel a common responsibility for the major problems of the world and for lesser problems that may subsist within smaller groups of states.
e. More recently in the 1990s the problems of international trade, which was growing increasingly complex, led to the development of the WTO.
f. For instance, concern with the instability of commodities markets led to the establishment in the 1980s of the Common Fund for Commodities and the competition for the newly discovered wealth of the international seabed area resulted in the creation of the ISA under the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982, based on the concept of the ‘the common heritage of mankind’.
As the information on air warfare tasks and stressors was being gathered and scenarios were being developed, a parallel effort ensued to identify a test bed simulation for air warfare teams. To maintain experimental control, it was determined by the designers that choosing a low physical fidelity simulation was acceptable as long as cognitive fidelity in a team simulation was maintained through subjecting soldiers to pressure situations in a simulated combat setting and attempting to ensure that naturalistic decision making of soldiers would not be compromised.
Which of the following statements, if true, weakens the logic of the above passage?
i. A number of studies have shown that high levels of physical stress lead to a weakening of the decision - making capabilities of human beings.
ii. It has been convincingly demonstrated by various studies that human beings by nature are not designed to adapt to high levels of mental stress.
iii. Numerous studies have shown that simulated environments can be designed to be good substitutes for real - life combat situations.
iv. Studies have shown that simulated exercises for armed forces personnel have tended to induce a systematic type of “correct” and common behaviour among the trainees.
v. Officers, when short - listing soldiers for critical operations, pick up battle - hardened soldiers rather than those who have been trained through simulations.
Answer questions on the basis of the paragraph below
We are not only afraid of being in the dark; we are also suspicious of being kept in the dark. We often feel that the universe has a hidden order that we cannot quite comprehend. In ancient times, this order was attributed to the gods – omnipotent beings who controlled humans’ fates. Greek myths in particular portrayed humans as pawns in the great games played by the gods. More recently, there are suspicions of global conspiracies. These conspiracies are cited for events that are too important to be random. We no longer describe them as “Acts of God,” so they must be the work of other people - people who are hiding their influence over us, covering up their involvement. They are keeping the rest of us in the dark. Among the events attributed to these people are political assassinations and UFO sightings.
Examining these events in minute detail results in a long list of “coincidences” which,
in the minds of the conspiracy buffs, are too numerous to be truly random. There must be a central planner who is at the hub of a sinister form of order. No one admits to the conspiracy, so there must be a cover - up. Better to think that we are all being kept in the dark by sinister forces than to admit that there is no order.
Which of the following statements, if true, would weaken the underlying logic of the above passage?
i. The human need for order is a highly exaggerated notion. It more often than not leads to creation of theories about the universe. The more sensational the theory, the more prevalent it becomes.
ii. The universe is less guided by pure randomness than by well - defined natural processes which are subjected to randomness at varying intervals of time and space.
iii. To strengthen their case for a variety of conspiracies the conspiracy buffs are extrapolating from a very small set of observed “coincidences”.
iv. The persons propounding the different conspiracy theories are usually novelists who use these theories as a backdrop during the construction of the plots of the novels.
v. The human fear of being kept in the dark is much stronger than the fear of lack of order in the working of the universe.
Which of the following statements would, if true, strengthen the case for belief in sinister forces and conspiracies being at work in the above paragraph?
i. Though science has progressed a lot in the last two centuries or so, it is still unable to explain/account for more than 80% of the phenomena in the universe.
ii. There is now the existence of photographic evidence of presence of UFOs and a growing number of parallel studies showing that the human mind can easily be manipulated to do someone else’s will through various events that manipulate the ‘perceived reality’.
iii. The fear of our actions and thoughts being controlled by someone else has intensified with the widespread popularity of the depiction of its gory outcomes by different novelists and movie makers.
iv. There is a strong movement to reintroduce the teachings of the biblical evolutionary process and the presence of God in schools around the world.
v. The Darwinian study of evolution of species, the cornerstone of beliefs in fathomable randomness of the workings of the universe has come under a scathing attack for its inaccurate depiction of the causes and process of evolution.
For the following questions answer them individually
The motivation of human beings towards their work is a subject matter that is at once a simple as well as an extremely complicated matter. For a long time, economists, sociologists, as well as psychologists believed that a carrot and stick approach, with monetary incentives playing the role of the carrot, would be sufficient to goad employees towards achieving higher levels of performance. However, a number of recent studies and observations, especially dealing with the open source revolution are placing on the table strong evidence suggesting that monetary incentives are only one part of the entire story of motivation through incentives. In a study conducted by a group of researchers at MIT, it was found that monetary incentives work well only in respect of tasks requiring mechanical skills i.e. those tasks not requiring much use of higher level cognitive abilities (such as memorizing or problem solving). In fact their study showed that setting high monetary incentives for tasks requiring cognitive abilities were more likely than not to produce adverse outcomes. Since this result flew straight in the face of the widely accepted body of knowledge on employee motivation, they conducted multiple experiments in different settings and countries to ensure that it was not a one - off result. The findings were the same in all repetitions of the experiment. These studies appear to suggest that monetary incentives need to be provided only to such an extent as to take the minds of employees off the issue of money and focus on other issues that are necessary to get the job done right. For instance, some experiments have shown that greater autonomy to employees and lowered interference from management (and bosses) is successful in driving the performance of employees working in cognitive skill intensive jobs.
Identify the statement(s) that is (are) logically consistent with the con tent of the paragraph
i. The carrot - stick approach essentially requires the use of rewards to get more of a desired behaviour whereas penalties lead to increased undesirable behaviour.
ii. Expending time and effort on the design of monetary incentives is a wasteful exercise.
iii. The study by the group of MIT researchers was a flawed exercise from the start.
iv. There appears to be a need to reorient the existing paradigm prevalent in incentive design.
v. During the process of designing incentives, one should clearly delineate activities into those requiring mechanical skills and those requiring higher - level cognitive skills and design with separate sets of incentives and penalties for each.
Answer questions on the basis of the following conversation between two friends, Paradox (P) and Herodox (H)
P: The human body is but the tomb of the soul and the visible world of matter is appearance that must be overcome if we are to know reality. The former is an integral part of “being”, that which can neither come into existence nor cease to exist for it always is. Being is unmoved and undistributed. Motion and disturbance belong to the realm of “becoming”, the changing world of unreality rather than of “being” in which true reality resides. Further, motion & change by belonging to the realm of “becoming” by having no separate existence of their own are logically inconsistent with reality and hence, unworthy of serious study.
H: All things are in a state of perpetual flux. Permanence, and by extension, the concept of “being” is only an illusion. This change and continual transformation, through an often disorderly process of conflict and survival of the fittest, is the underlying principle at work in the universe. It is from this principle that all things come into existence, and forms the basis for the morals and governance patterns that attempt to preserve the social thread of societies. By extension, the study of human activity through the lens of an idealized state of “being” and as a basis for formulating moral codes of conduct is inappropriate at best.
Which of the following statements could be considered as logically consistent with the views of paradox in the above paragraphs?
i. A fly travelling on a flying arrow perceives it to be at rest. Therefore the flying arrow belongs to the realm of being.
ii. The activities of the day to day life are concerned with the unreal part of human existence and hence, should not be subject to moral standards.
iii. Maintaining a balance among the various constituents of society is essential to the well - being and the continuing existence of the soul.
iv. Conflicts and the coming of spontaneous order do not have any underlying causes that are relevant for study as the notion of perpetual flux itself is erroneous.
v. The real is and cannot be non - existent. Further, reality is one and unique.
Answer questions on the basis of the information below.
Five reviews of the recently published novel, Caught in a Blizzard, are reproduced below. The reviews and the reviewers are identified as indicated by the numbers.
a: This novel can change your life - for the good, as it has changed mine. It has made me reflect critically about my life.
b: The novel has become a popular piece of literature, more among the youth than among the older population.
c: The author uses the plot in her novel to present her philosophy about life in a positive light, rather than relying on the merits of the philosophy per se.
d: The author is known to be a writer of great power. The intricate and captivating plots in her novels shows that she has a subtle and ingenious mind.
e: People have been jolted out of their beliefs about love and other different aspects of life after reading this novel.
The options to the questions 75 - 77 are same as the reviews/reviewers indicated above.
There has been criticism about reviewers that they write reviews after having a cursory reading of the book in question. Based on the analysis of the different reviews, which reviewer is most likely to have read the book in greater detail as compared to the other reviewers?
