XAT 2018 Question Paper - DM
Answer the following questions on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Satyender heads a branch of a Micro-Finance company. The company provides small-size loans catering to rural households. As the head of the branch, he supervises three collection officers - Palani, Sayed, and Godwin. Palani was recently transferred by the company from another branch.
Sayed feared Palani's transfer may pull down the performance of the branch, as he felt Palani was transferred due to his poor performance in the previous branch.
Which of the following information will most likely assuage Sayed's fear?
Three months later, Palani submitted local travel bills to Satyender for reimbursement. Satyender realized that the bill amount was 30% higher than expected.
Which of the following options, if true, will enable Satyender take a decision that shall set a precedent, which is least likely to be misused in the future?
Satyender is allocating territories to his subordinates for the coming financial year. So far, Palani's performance has been poor and this allocation will decide his future in the organization.
Which of the following information will be the least useful to Satyender in taking a fair allocation decision?
Answer questions 30-32 on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Lal & Sons, a family business, comprises three different companies in three different industries. Sudarshan Lal was heading this entire business from the inception. Two years ago, he hired three managers, one for each company and Chhaganlal Jha as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to look after the entire business. These three managers are reporting to the CEO. However, Sudarshan Lal and his family still own the entire business, though they are not involved in day to day operations.
Two years after the handing over, Sudarshan was concerned that none of the companies, except one, is profitable.
Which of the following information, if true, will most likely reduce Sudarshan's concerns?
Some of the senior employees who left Lal & Sons in recent past have complained to Sudarshan that the long cherished values of the organization such as respect for elders, job security etc. are being compromised.
Which of the following options, if true, will indicate to Sudarshan that the employees are misleading him?
Chhaganlal Jha, the CEO, was certain that someone in his leadership team was leaking information to Sudarshan Lal, well before Chhaganlal communicated.
Given the following options, how best should Chagganlal Jha respond to this situation?
Answer questions 33-35 on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Rose is the Queen of Kingdom A and Emily is the Queen of Kingdom B; both share a common border. They also share a border with Kingdom C, a much larger kingdom, ruled by King Jonathan who has expansive ambitions. Though individually their armies were no match to his might, together their armies were more powerful than King Jonathanās army.
Jonathanās kingdom also bordered Kingdom K on the opposite side, making Kingdom C a buffer state between Kingdoms A, B and K. Kingdom K is ruled by King Summer Sault, who united a group of warring and belligerent tribes under his aegis. Kingdom K and Kingdom C had continuous skirmishes with each other.
Jonathan realized that he has limited arms and ammunition to fight on all the three fronts simultaneously. Therefore, he planned to double the arms and ammunition which will take a few years. When this news reached Emily and Rose they held a secret meeting to discuss the situation.
Which of the following actions, by Emily and Rose, will be the best suited to delay Jonathan's plan?
Jonathan aims to invade and annex Kingdom K once and for all.
Which of the following options will best enable him to accomplish the ambition?
King Summer Sault was growing tired of the warring tribes, who slowed down the overall economic development of Kingdom K.
Which of the following is the best option for King Summer Sault to focus on economic development?
Answer questions 36-38 on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Ava is the CEO of Ratan Brothers, a bicycle manufacturing company. The organization is doing well financially, with a steadily increasing share price. Recently, Ava promoted Bhushan, her nephew, to the position of head of procurement after he completed five years in the organization. After the promotion, he was automatically inducted into the quality council headed by Ava.
Dev and Sons is a supplier to Ratan Brothers. It supplies āball bearingsā, an important part of any bicycle. After Bhushan took over, he switched to a new supplier citing quality deficiencies in Dev and Sonsā product. Dev and Sons responded by publicly declaring that quality was not compromised. Further, it alleged that its competitor bribed Bhushan to get the contract.
Post this public allegation, the share price of Ratan Brothers started falling.
Which of the following is the best option for Ava to immediately stem the falling stock prices?
Under pressure from media and suppliers, Ava constituted a cross-functional committee of senior executives to investigate Dev and Sons' allegation against Bhushan. The committee exonerated Bhushan. However, rumors within the organization began to spread that the decision was influenced by nepotism.
Which of the following should be the best response from Ava?
A few months after the issue of Dev and Sons, a vigilance committee discovered some financial irregularities attributable to Bhushan in his earlier stint as a senior manager in marketing. The board of directors was concerned about this and demanded a response from the CEO.
Ava contemplated following responses:
1. Offer to resign from the post of CEO, since as the CEO she is ultimately responsible for everything in the organization.
2. Sack Bhushan immediately and make the reason public.
3. Have a town hall meeting with all the employees and deny any financial irregularities in the organization.
4. Communicate to the board that as the CEO, the organization's financial health is her top priority, on which she has delivered stellar performance in the last five years.
5. Inform the board that Bhushan was promoted because his initiatives helped the company immensely.
Which of the following sequence of actions is the most appropriate for Ava?
A courier service has offices at three locations: Jamshedpur, Kharagpur and Howrah. Its employees travel by trains from one location to another for pick-up and delivery. It takes 40 minutes for an employee to travel from any railway station to the nearest office (and another 40 minutes for coming back); the paperwork to deliver the parcel at the respective office takes an additional 10 minutes. Assume employees do not waste any time.
What will be the minimum time required to deliver a parcel at Kharagpur office from Jamshedpur station and come back to Jamshedpur station?
An employee, starting from Howrah station, has to deliver one parcel at Kharagpur office and another parcel at Jamshedpur office. His task starts the moment he boards the train at Howrah station, and gets completed immediately after delivering the second parcel.
Which of the following trains should he board at Howrah station to minimize the time required to complete his task?
An employee, starting from Kharagpur station, has to deliver one parcel at Howrah office and another parcel at Jamshedpur office. His task starts the moment he boards the train at Kharagpur station, and gets completed immediately after delivering the second parcel.
Which of the following trains should he board at Kharagpur station to minimize the time required to complete the task?
Answer questions 42-43 on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Three persons, A, B and C, lived on an island hill. A lived on the top of the island hill, B occupied the middle portion of the hill and C occupied the bottom of the hill. The top of the hill received good rainfall, the main source of water in the hill, though this portion of the hill had few trees. The middle of the hill however was lush with trees offering timber. The bottom of the hill had a good amount of stones and sand. A, B and C assessed their wealth in terms of ownership of timber, water, stones and sand available in the island hill only. During heavy rains, stones and sand from the top and middle portion of the hill rolled over to the bottom. When the rains stopped, both A and B claimed that some stones rolled down from their lands to the land occupied by C. They wanted the stones back. But C argued that rolling down of stones is a natural process.
All three approached a wise man for the settlement of the ownership dispute.
Which of the following is the best option available for the wise man?
Six months later, the three realized that the solution offered by the wise man in the previous question wasn't working to the satisfaction of all, because it did not help them find the appropriate value of resources. Therefore, they reverted to status quo ante. After one year, all three of them wanted to construct a house each, on their respective property. Three types of resources-1.Timber, 2.water and 3.stone & sand- were required to build a house. While each had one resource in abundance none of them had all the three in sufficient quantity. They still could not come to an agreement on how to fairly value and use each other's resources to construct the house. They again approached the wise man for advice.
The wise man studied the situation carefully and proposed the following actions:
1. The governing body of the United Federation of Islands, of which the island hill is a part, should take ownership of all the three properties and construct houses for the three.
2. Each person should own one third of each of the resources.
3. The three persons should arrive at the value of resources by trading the resources among them.
Which of the following is the most appropriate in the best interests of A, B and C?
Answer questions 44-45 on the basis of information given in the following situation.
Ramesh, the owner of an auto-component manufacturing company in Sanand, had just returned after attending the funeral of his employee, Pankaj Kumar, who had died of cancer at the age of 35. Pankaj was a hardworking and sincere employee with impeccable performance record. Pankaj was the sole bread earner for his family with negligible savings and was survived by his wife and two school going children. His wife will get around 8 lakh rupees accrued to Pankaj as social security benefit.
A large number of employees wanted the organization to employ Pankajās wife on compassionate grounds so that she could support her family. Though Ramesh was sympathetic to the demand, he realized that this could set a precedence, where the organization will have to provide jobs for everyone with similar conditions in the future. In fact, only recently, Ramesh had refused a request for a job to the daughter of an employee, who had died a few months before he was to retire.
Ramesh formed a committee to look into this matter and the committee came up with the following suggestions:
1. Create a fund to take care of immediate family expenses.
2. Finance the school and college education of his children.
3. Sponsor the vocational education of his wife and subsequently help her find a job.
4. Purchase insurance for all the family members.
5. Request all employees of the organization to contribute towards the welfare of the family.
Which of the following options, from the above suggestions, will be the most sustainable for Pankaj's family?
Ramesh, along with senior managers, was in the process of designing a policy to deal with such issues in the future.
Which of the following policy statements will be the least amenable to misuse in the future?
Madhuri Apte, a busy professional, rents out her studio apartment located in South Mumbai. Since she stays three hours away from the studio apartment, she uses a networked digital lock to monitor the property remotely. Each customer gets a temporary and unique access code for the digital lock that enables them to enter the studio apartment for the duration of stay. The apartmentās entrance door can also be opened with physical keys and Madhuri Apte has two such keys in her possession.
Madhuri Apte has employed a cleaner who has a permanent access code to enter the apartment for cleaning every day. She is available only between 15:00 hrs and 17:00 hrs.
Madhuri Apteās apartment caters largely to international customers. A customer typically stays for 3 days, paying an average rent of $125 per day.
While Madhuri Apte's studio apartment gets good feedback on other aspects, many seem unhappy as they found the operation of the digital lock complicated.
Which of the following options is the best for Madhuri Apte in this context?
Madhuri's apartment received good feedback from the guests, except with respect to the operation of the digital lock. She decided to leave a spare physical key in the house for her guests. Recently some of the guests had forgotten to leave the key behind during checkout. Making a spare key will cost $500 and will take about 10 days to arrive. She was confused if she should continue leaving the spare key and was looking for a way out.
Which of the following would be the best way out for her?
