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?
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.
Solution
We cannot predict the future performance using the past records. Therefore, any option that stresses on the track record to allay the fear can be eliminated.
Options A, B, C, and D use the past performance as a tool to assert that the person will perform well. Therefore, we can eliminate these options. Only option E states that Sayed has an option to exclude the new joinee's performance. Even if Palani fails to perform, Sayed will not have to bear the brunt for the same. Therefore, option E will encourage Sayed to provide Palani with a chance and hence, option E is the right answer.
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?
Solution
Option A provides a justification why Palani's expenses are on a higher side. Also, the other options involve a level of subjectivity. The truth in the claims cannot be verified in the other options and hence, a decision cannot be arrived. Option A talks about a quantifiable reason and hence, Satyendar can make a decision. Therefore, option A is the right answer.
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?
Solution
To make a decision, there must be a factor that encourages/discourages the distribution of territories to his subordinates.
Options A shows that Sayed has been a good performer, and can be allotted a fair share of the territories. Option B shows that Sayed is in a tight spot, and hence can be allowed to focus more on his territory and not assign him significantly more territories.
Similarly, Options D and E provide info as to how the performance of Godwin has been. They would help Satyender to decide to assign more territories or fewer territories according to the performance of Godwin over the past years.
Note that C provides no such factor of consideration. It merely states that there is a new territory that faces stiff competition. What about the other territories, what should be their distribution? Even we are unsure about this territory. Let us say Palani's performance is poor. But should this territory be assigned to Godwin or Sayed, who is a better performer? Hence, C does not lead us anywhere.
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?
Solution
A per the information provided in the question we need to look for a case that provides the required assurance of how the current and the future prospects may turn out.
Since a financial institution that acts as an independent researcher has a very positive outlook towards the loss-making company's prospects in the future. This provides the required assurance for not just Sudarshan but for all the key stakeholders. Hence is very crucial to understand how things stand currently for the company.
It will be appropriate that it was handed over to professionals but unless any results are provided from the professional advice this might not be significant enough to assure Sudarshan.
The huge success in one industry cannot be translated or expected to compensate for the loss in the other two industries.
We are not aware if the replaced employees are incompetent or poorly performing employees. Hence this does not hold significance in assuring the required confidence.
If people are leaving at a much higher rate compared to the industry average then this becomes a matter of concern and hence is not correct.
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?
Solution
We need to find the option where we can say that the senior employees are misguiding Sudarshan, which is best explained in option B. The senior employees were given respected positions that means they were being valued which contradicts the senior person's claims. The other options can be eliminated.
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?
Solution
The leakage of information should be prevented. Sudharsan Lal is supposed to know the proceedings of the company but it should be through a formal communication channel.
We can eliminate option B since it proposes an immature course of action.
Option C can be eliminated as well since it proposes no step to curb the leak of information.
We can eliminate option D since it does not propose any course of action.
Option E can be eliminated as well since it spoils the relationship between him and the business heads. Also, it fails to find out the person responsible for leaking the information and even if someone is fired, there is no way to know whether Chhaganlal has fired the right person.
Chaganlal should request Sudharsan to be patient till he gives out the information. This will ensure that Sudharsan will not have the need to depend on second-hand information and hence, will address the root cause of the issue. Therefore, option A is the right answer.
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 Jonathan’s army.
Jonathan’s 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?
Solution
Emily and Rose together are more powerful than Jonathan. By attacking Jonathan they will be able to engage him in war and delay by diverting his resources towards war. Thus option D would 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?
Solution
Rose and Emily would not help Jonathan in annexing K as it may make him stronger. Hence, neither option A nor B can be the answer. It is not indicated if Rose and Emily have any intentions of attacking Jonathan. Even if a rift is created between Emily and Rose, they would realise the intentions of Jonathan when he attempts to annex K. Thus, Jonathan should secretly double his army so that neither Emily nor Rose would know about it. Hence, option D is the best option.
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?
Solution
Eliminating the tribes is not a viable option as it will further aggravate the problem so option B can be eliminated. Option A cannot be the answer as Jonathan may become a threat in future. Option D further aggravates the problem. Option E does not help in controlling the tribes. Option C 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 “ball bearings”, an important part of any bicycle. After Bhushan took over, he switched to a new supplier citing quality deficiencies in Dev and Sons’ 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?
Solution
The goal is to find a solution that will immediately stem the falling stock prices.
Here, the options A, D and E will not help and can even exacerbate the problem and hence are eliminated.
Option B could help, but the committee’s investigation might take a considerable time, and we want an immediate solution.
Option C will show the consumers that the company prioritises quality. Their openness to letting people scrutinise the relevant documents will show that the company has nothing to hide.
Hence, this option has the best chance of solving the problem and is the answer.
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?
Solution
We need a solution that will show all the employees that the decision to exonerate Bhushan was based on facts and his merit and not nepotism.
Options A, C and D, will have the opposite effect, as doing nothing and sacking the employees will increase the people’s suspicions and give rise to even more rumours.
Option B suggests forcing Bhushan to resign temporarily, but doing so will show that Ava does not have confidence in the committee’s decision.
Option E is the best among these. A town hall meeting, open to all employees, will show that the committee and Ava are not afraid to answer any questions that may arise and demonstrates their willingness to be transparent about their decision, with their employees.
Hence, option E is the answer.
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?
Solution
Here we require actions that show that some action is being taken against the accused and that someone takes responsibility for letting the wrongdoings happen.
Response 3’s suggestion of denying all the financial irregularities will cause suspicions to rise among the employees regarding the morals of Ava and the presumed nepotism that led to Bhushan’s appointment and promotion.
Response 4 tries to avoid blame by stating the good financial performance of the company.
Thus, these two options will be eliminated.
Responses 1(taking responsibility), 2(taking action against the accused) and 5(reason for Bhushan's appointment and promotion) are the most appropriate actions.
Thus option A, containing all these responses, is the correct answer.
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.
Employees have the option to choose front any of the trains, whose timetable is given in the table below. Assume all trains travel on time and there is no time gap between arrival and departure of a train. Further, assume that the employee boards the train as soon as it arrives at the station.
What will be the minimum time required to deliver a parcel at Kharagpur office from Jamshedpur station and come back to Jamshedpur station?
Solution
Share
Let’s consider the case where the employee takes the T102 train.
(S)He leaves the Jamshedpur station at 7:30 and arrives at Kharagpur station at 9:05. It takes them 40+10+40 = 90mins to deliver the package and returns to the station at 10:35.
(S)He then takes the T202 train from the Kharagpur station and arrives at the Jamshedpur station at 12:35.
Thus, the total journey takes place between 7:30 and 12:35, i.e., 5 hours and 5 minutes.
Hence, option B is the answer.
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?
Solution
T201: Howrah station to Kharagpur station (6:30 - 8:15) --> Delivery (8:16 - 9:45) --> Kharagpur to Jamshedpur via T202 (10:40 - 12:35) --> Delivery (12:35 - 13:25). Thus, a total of 6hr 55mins.
T202: Howrah station to Kharagpur station (8:30 - 10:45) --> Delivery (10:46 - 12:10) --> Kharagpur to Jamshedpur via T203 (12:15 - 1400) --> Delivery (14:01 - 14:50). Thus, a total of 6hr 20mins.
T204: Howrah station to Kharagpur station (14:30 - 16:15) --> Delivery (16:16 - 17:45) --> Kharagpur to Jamshedpur via T205 (17:55 - 20:00) --> Delivery (20:01 - 20:50). Thus, a total of 6hr 20mins.
Thus, T202 and T204 require the least amount of time.
Hence, option E is the answer.
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?
Solution
The dispute is regarding the ownership of stones. Neither option A nor C is a fair decision as not every stone is rolled down. Moreover, some of the stones rolled down form B's region also. Option B is irrelevant as there is no issue with ownership of water and neither there is a necessity to cause hardship to B. Rolling down of stones does not lead to transfer of ownership. Thus option D is the best among the given options.
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?
Solution
Option C is the best option as they have to optimize the resources based on the individual demand.
Option A all the three lose control over the problems.
Option B again may not lead to sufficiency for construction of each of the house.
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 Pankaj’s 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?
Solution
Suggestion 5 cannot be a part of the correct solution as the employees themselves have requested the organisation for help.
Suggestion 4 is the matter concerning the private life of the employee family.
Suggestion 1 is to set up a precautionary fund covering expected expenditure for all such employees, which may be costly.
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?
Solution
When all the stake holders are involved, there would be checks and balances and hence the scope of misuse is the least. Therefore, option E is the best choice here.
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 apartment’s 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 Apte’s 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?
Solution
Switching to physical lock will be a retrograde step. Digital lock provides Madhuri with an option to monitor her apartment remotely and a physical lock will not allow her to do the same. Therefore, we can eliminate option A.
We can eliminate option B too since it suffers from the same flaw as option A.
It has been given that the cleaner will be available only for a limited period every day. Therefore, the cleaner cannot be asked to explain the working of digital lock and hence, we can eliminate option C as well.
Madhuri cannot afford to be indifferent. Doing so will result in unsatisfied customers. Therefore, we can eliminate option D as well.
Option E states that Madhuri should educate her customers using a video on how to operate the digital lock. Releasing such a tutorial will ensure that the grievance of the customers get redressed. Also, Madhuri can continue using the digital lock as well. Therefore, option E is the right answer.
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?
Solution
Option A is limiting the choices, not the best solution in this case.
Option B is incorrect as it increases operational effort for Madhuri.
Option C is ruled out as cleaner cannot stay whenever guests leave the apartment.
Option D is not an effective solution as customers may still not leave their keys behind despite the polite reminders given to the customers.
Option E addresses the concerns that customers don't leave the keys behind, as well gave an option to recover a portion of the cost, if such incidents still occur.
Option E is correct.
