IBPSPO18-Oct-2014 Related Question Answers
52. Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organisations that do it well are extraordinarily rare. This gap is not due to a lack of commitment to learning. Managers in the vast majority of enterprises that I have studied over the past 20 years —pharmaceutical. financial services, product design, telecommunications, and construction companies: hospitals; and NASA’s space shuttle program, among others— genuinely wanted to help their organisations learn from failures to improve future performance. In some cases they and their teams had devoted many hours to afteraction reviews, postmortems, and the like. But time after time I saw that these painstaking efforts led to no real change. The reason: Those managers were thinking about failure the wrong way. Most executives I’ve talked to believe that failure is bad (of course!). They also believe that learning from it is pretty straightforward: Ask people to reflect on what they did wrong and exhort them to avoid similar mistakes in the future—or, better yet, assign a team to review and write a report on what happened and then distribute it throughout the organisation. These widely held beliefs are misguided. First, failure is not always bad. In organisational life it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from organisational failures is anything but straightforward. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures are in short supply in most companies, and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated. Or – ganisations need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial (“Procedures weren’t followed”) or self-serving (“The market just wasn’t ready for our great new product”). That means jettisoning old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions of success and embracing failure’s lessons. Leaders can begin by understanding how the blame game gets in the way. The Blame Game Failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households. organisations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organisations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised. Executives I’ve interviewed in organisations as different as hospitals and investment banks admit to being torn: How can they respond constructively to failures without giving rise to an anything-goes attitude? If people aren’t blamed for failures, what will ensure that they try as hard as possible to do their best work? This concern is based on a false dichotomy. In actuality, a culture that makes it safe to admit and report on failure can—and in some organisational contexts must–coexist with high standards for performance. To understand why, look at the exhibit “A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure,” which lists causes ranging from deliberate deviation to thoughtful experimentation. Which of these causes involve blameworthy actions? Deliberate deviance, first on the list, obviously warrants blame. But inattention might not. If it results from a lack of effort, perhaps it’s blameworthy. But if it results from fatigue near the end of an overly long shift, the manager who assigned the shift is more at fault than the employee. As we go down the list, it gets more and more difficult to find blameworthy acts. In fact, a failure resulting from thoughtful experimentation that generates valuable information may actually be praiseworthy. When I ask executives to consider this spectrum and then to estimate how many of the failures in their organisations are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits—perhaps 2% to 5%. But when I ask how many are treated as blameworthy, they say (after a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%. The unfortunate consequence is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost. Question : sophisticated understanding of failure’s causes and contexts will help to avoid the blame game and institute an effective strategy for learning from failure. Although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organisations, mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent.Which of the following statement (s) is/are true in the context of the given passage ? I. Most executives believe that failure is bad and learning from it is pretty straightforward. II. The wisdom of learning from failure is disputable. III. Deliberate deviance, first on the list of the exhibit, “A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure” obviously warrants blame.
53.
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. The past quarter of a century has seen several bursts of selling by the world’s governments, mostly but not always in benign market conditions. Those in the OECD, a rich-country club, divested plenty of stuff in the 20 years before the global financial crisis. The first privatisation wave, which built up from the mid-1980s and peaked in 2000, was largely European. The drive to cut state intervention under Margaret Thatcher in Britain soon spread to the continent. The movement gathered pace after 1991, when eastern Europe put thousands of rusting state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the block. A second wave came in the mid-2000s, as European economies sought to cash in on buoyant markets. But activity in OECD countries slowed sharply as the financial crisis began. In fact, it reversed. Bailouts of failing banks and companies have contributed to a dramatic increase in government purchases of corporate equity during the past five years. A more lasting fea ture is the expansion of the state capitalism practised by China and other emerging economic powers. Governments have actually bought more equity than they have sold in most years since 2007, though sales far exceeded purchases in 2013. Today privatisation is once again “alive and well”, says William Megginson of the Michael Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. According to a global tally he recently completed, 2012 was the third-best year ever, and preliminary evidence suggests that 2013 may have been better. However, the geography of sell-offs has changed, with emerging markets now to the fore. China, for instance, has been selling minority stakes in banking, energy, engineering and broadcasting; Brazil is selling airports to help finance a $20 billion investment programme. Eleven of the 20 largest IPOs between 2005 and 2013 were sales of minority stakes by SOEs, mostly in developing countries. By contrast, state-owned assets are now “the forgotten side of the balance-sheet” in many advanced economies, says Dag Detter, managing partner of Whetstone Solutions, an adviser to governments on asset restructuring. They shouldn’t be. Governments of OECD countries still oversee vast piles of assets, from banks and utilities to buildings, land and the riches beneath (see table). Selling some of these holdings could work wonders: reduce debt, finance infrastructure, boost economic efficiency. But governments often barely grasp the value locked up in them. The picture is clearest for companies or company-like entities held by central governments. According to data compiled by the OECD and published on its website, its 34 member countries had 2,111 fully or majority-owned SOEs, with 5.9m employees, at the end of 2012. Their combined value (allowing for some but not all pension-fund liabilities) is estimated at $2.2 trillion, roughly the same size as the global hedge-fund industry. Most are in network industries such as telecoms, electricity and transport. In addition, many countries have large minority stakes in listed firms. Those in which they hold a stake of between 10% and 50% have a combined market value of $890 billion and employ 2.9m people.
The data are far from perfect. The quality of reporting varies widely, as do definitions of what counts as a state-owned company: most include only centralgovernment holdings. If all assets held at sub-national level, such as local water companies, were included, the total value could be more than $4 trillion. Reckons Hans Christiansen, an OECD economist. Moreover, his team has had to extrapolate because some QECD members, including America and Japan, provide patchy data. America is apparently so queasy about discussions of public ownership of -commercial assets that the Treasury takes no part in the OECD’s working group on the issue, even though it has vast holdings, from Amtrak and the 520,000-employee Postal Service to power generators and airports. The club’s efforts to calculate the value that SOEs add to, or subtract from, economies were abandoned after several countries, including America, refused to co-operate.
Privatisation has begun picking up again recently in the OECD for a variety of reasons. Britain’s Conservative-led coalition is fbcused on (some would say obsessed with) reducing the public debt-to-GDP ratio. Having recently sold the Royal Mail through a public offering, it is hoping to offload other assets, including its stake in URENCO, a uranium enricher, and its student-loan portfolio. From January 8th, under a new Treasury scheme, members of the public and businesses will be allowed to buy government land and buildings on the open market. A website will shortly be set up to help potential buyers see which bits of the government’s /..337 billion-worth of holdings ($527 billion at today’s rate, accounting for 40% of developable sites round Britain) might be surplus. The government, said the chief treasury secretary, Danny Alexander, “should not act as some kind of compulsive hoarder”. Japan has different reasons to revive sell-offs, such as to finance reconstruction after its devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Eyes are once again turning to Japan Post, a giant postal-to-financial-services conglomerate whose oftpostponed partial sale could at last happen in 2015 and raise (Yen) 4 trillion ($40 billion) or more. Australia wants to sell financial, postal and aviation assets to offset the fall in revenues caused by the commodities slowdown. In almost all the countries of Europe, privatisation is likely “to surprise on the upside” as long as markets continue to mend, reckons Mr Megginson. Mr Christiansen expects to see three main areas of activity in coming years. First will
be the resumption of partial sell-offs in industries such as telecoms, transport and utilities. Many residual stakes in partly privatised firms could be sold down further. France, for instance, still has hefty stakes in GDF SUEZ, Renault, Thales and Orange. The government of Francois Hollande may be ideologically opposed to privatisation, but it is hoping to reduce industrial stakes to raise funds for livelier sectors, such as broadband and health.
The second area of growth should be in eastern Europe, where hundreds of large firms, including manufacturers, remain in state hands. Poland will sell down its stakes in listed firms to make up for an expected reduction in EU structural funds. And the third area is the reprivatisation of financial institutions rescued during the crisis. This process is under way: the largest privatisation in 2012 was the $18 billion offering of America’s residual stake in AIG, an insurance company.Which of the following statements is not true in the context of the given passage ?
54. As opined by the writer of this article, although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organisations, mistakes fall into three broad categories. What are these categories ?
55. Why have so few organisations shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised ?
57.
Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word /group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Exhort
58.
Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word /group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Jettison
59.
Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word /group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Dichotomy
60.
Choose the word/group of words which is most opposite in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Incontrovertible
61.
Choose the word/group of words which is most opposite in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Overly
62.
Each question below has two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.Manufacturing growth across Asia, Europe and the Americas eased in current month as heavy price cutting failed to revive , providing more evidence that a feeble global economic recovery may be to a halt.
63.
Each question below has two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.Crude oil markets rose after a five year low rebounding after data suggested that tumbling prices may have started to affect activjty in the fast growing US shale oil industry
64.
Each question below has two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.In fact, there is a strong case to promote liquor in high quality factories under regulation so that the of illicit liquor and hooch goes down.
65.
Each question below has two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.The government ease foreign direct norms for the construction development sector , which is expected to provide a boost to the sector in terms of greater foreign capital inflows.
66.
Each question below has two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Choose the word for each blank which best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.The banks were nationalised in to take banking to the country and all its citizens.
67. Which of the following statement (s) is/are true in regard to the data compiled by the OECD ? I. The 34 member countries of OECD had 2111 fully or majority owned stateowned enterprises (SOEs) II. In these SOEs there were 5.9 million employees at the end of 2012. III. The combined value of these SOEs is estimated at $ 2.2 trillion, roughly the same size as the global hedge-fund industry.
68. Privatisation has begun picking up again recently in the OECD for a variety of reasons. Which of the following statements does not support the above mentioned view ?
71. In almost all the countries of- Europe, privatisation is to surprise. As expected by Mr. Christiansen, Which of the following is/are to be the main areas of activity ? I. Resumption of partial sell-offs in industries such as telecoms. transport and utilities. II. The other area of growth should be in eastern Europe III. The other area is the reprivatisation of financial institutions rescued during the crisis.
72.
Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word /group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Buoyant
73.
Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word /group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Revive
74.
Choose the word/group of words which is most opposite in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.Offload
75. In the following figure, ABCD is a square whose each side is 10cm long. Mangles AEC and AEFC are congruent. Point B’ is the mid-point of side EC. Find the area of AEFC (in sq. cm).
Powered By:Omega Web Solutions© 2002-2017 Omega Education PVT LTD...Privacy | Terms And Conditions