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(Download) UPSC IAS Mains Exam Paper - 2017 : Management

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(Download) UPSC IAS Mains Exam Paper - 2017 : Management

MANAGEMENT
(Paper - I)

Time Allowed : Three Hours

Maximum Marks : 250

Question Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions :

There are EIGHT questions divided in TWO SECTIONS and printed both in HINDI and in ENGLISH.

Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all.

Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be attempted choosing at least ONE question from each section.

The number of marks carried by a question / part is indicated against it.

Answers must be written in the medium authorized in the Admission Certificate which must be on the cover of this Question-cum-Answer (RCA) Booklet in the space provided. No marks will be given for answers written in a medium other than the authorized one.

Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to. Assume suitable data, if considered necessary, and indicate the same clearly.

Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.

SECTION - A

Q1. Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:

(a) Discuss the contributions of Fayol in the development of management thought.
(b) Explain the concept of Perception and state the factors which have a bearing on the perceptual process of an individual.
(c) Explain five ways of employee empowerment in modern smart governmental organisations.
(d) Discuss contingent and transformational leadership styles with suitable examples from government and private sectors.
(e) What is Job Satisfaction ? What is its relationship with employees' intention to stay, productivity, absenteeism, turnover and accidents ? Answer in the context of Knowledge Based Organisations.

Q2. (a) Define Conflict. What are Intrapersonal and Interpersonal conflicts ? How can these be resolved ? Give examples.
(b) What is the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation ? Discuss different types of innovations.
(c) Organisational Behaviour is of multidisciplinary nature. Name 10 disciplines including emerging disciplines which contributed to make organisational behaviour. Give one example for each of the disciplines.

Q3. (a) What is Motivation? How can Maslow's Hierarchy theory be used to motivate employees in an organisation ? Explain.
(b) Explain the components of the technology enabled HRIS and feedback mechanism in an organisation. Do they lead to increased motivation and morale ? Substantiate.
(c) What are the potential sources and consequences of stress in the organisational context ? How can we deal with them?

Q4. (a) Explain the challenges of Human Resource Planning in the context of demographic and technological changes.
(b) "A business organisation's sole responsibility is to further the interest of its owners within the boundaries of legal framework and business organisations cannot be charged with social responsibilities.” Do you agree with the statement ? Explain.
(c) What is organisational culture ? How can organisational culture be built ? Explain.

SECTION - B

Q5. Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:

(a) Define Job Costing and Process Costing. In what ways is Job Costing different from Process Costing ?
(b) Explain the importance of Management Accounting in financial decisions.
(c) "The success of a company depends on its well-planned capital structure.” Examine.
(d) Explain the Miller-Orr model of cash management. How is this model helpful in determination of appropriate cash balance ?
(e) Market segmentation is a compromise between efficiency and effectiveness. Critically evaluate this statement.

Q6. (a) Define Standard Cost and Standard Costing. How is Standard Costing useful in the effective control over the cost ?
(b) Why is customer retention important in the current marketing environment ? Explain the strategies that could be adopted to retain customers for a long period of time.
(c) Explain the operating cycle concept of working capital. How is a close study of operating cycle helpful in the management of working capital ? Explain.

Q7. (a) "Equity capital and Retained earnings provide cost-free capital.” Do you agree with this statement ? Explain the methods for determining their costs.
(b) Define funds from operations. How is it computed ? Explain with example.
(c) Positioning is done in the consumer's mind and not of product. Explain its relevance in the context of a competitive market.

Q8. (a) What is the purpose of reconciling Cost and Financial Accounts ? Explain the causes of difference between costing profits and financial profits.
(b) The consumer does not take buying decisions randomly. Explain the various steps of the consumer decision-making process.
(c) "Leverage serves as a tool which cuts both ways. On one hand it increases the risk and on the other it provides an opportunity to increase return on investment.” Critically examine this statement.

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MANAGEMENT
(Paper - II)

Time Allowed : Three Hours

Maximum Marks : 250

Question Paper Specific Instructions

Please read each of the following instructions carefully before attempting questions :

There are EIGHT questions divided in TWO SECTIONS and printed both in HINDI and in ENGLISH.

Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all.

Questions no. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, any THREE are to be attempted choosing at least ONE question from each section.

The number of marks carried by a question / part is indicated against it.

Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to. Assume suitable data, if considered necessary, and indicate the same clearly.

SECTION - A

Q1. (a) A movie producer is bringing out a new movie. In order to map out his advertising campaign, he wants to determine whether the movie will appeal most to a particular age group or whether it will appeal equally to all age groups. The producer takes a random sample from persons attending the preview of the movie, and obtains the following results. Use X² test to drive the conclusion (for 6 degree 5% freedom and 5% significance level, X² critical value is 12.592) :

(b) 1000 lightbulbs with a mean life of 120 days are installed in a new company. Their length of life is normally distributed with a standard deviation of 20 days. How many bulbs will expire in less than 90 days? If it is decided to replace all the bulbs together, what interval should be allowed between group replacements if not more than 10% should expire before replacement?
(c) (i) ABC Company buys its annual requirements of 36000 units in 6 instalments. Each unit costs 1 and the ordering cost is estimated as 20% of unit value. Find the total arinual cost by the existing inventory policy. How much money can be saved by 'Economic Order Quantity' model?
(ii) Explain DMAIC methodology in the context of Six Sigma Quality.

(d) Discuss the need and method of 'Rapid Application Development (RAD)'. How does it differ from the traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)?
(e) In this age of rapid technological change and IT enabled business processes, in what ways are the organisational elements such as organisational structures, business processes and work flows getting affected? Discuss.

Q2. (a) A company manufactures two products Alpha' and 'Beta' Each unit of Alpha requires 1 hour of machining and 2 hours of skilled labour, whereas cach unit of Beta uses 2 hours of machining and 1 hour of skilled labour. For the forthcoming month, the machining capacity is limited to 720 hours and the Skilled labour is limit 780 hour, not more than 300 unit of Alfa cam be sold during a month. For the maximization of profits, determine the optimal product mix and maximum profit. Unit contribution from Alpha is 36 and from Beta is 4. Use Simplex method.
(b) Discuss the supply chain efficiency of Amazon.com with special reference to international supply chain design.
(c) ITC had come up with a web-based initiative called c-choupal which offers the farmers information about products and services they can use to enhance farm productivity, improve price realisation and reduce transaction costs, Farmers can access local and global information on scientific farming practices, weather forecasts as well as market prices, all in Hindi at the village choupal, e-choupal also facilitates supply of farm inputs and purchase of commodities at their doorsteps. In order to overcome the constraints at the village level, this model is designed to provide service support through a lead partner designated as e-choupal coordinator who acts as the interface between the computer System and the farmers.

(i) How is e-choupal different from other agri-based portals?
(ii) What technological aspects should be considered while designing such a web-based system?
(iii) What factors would be critical to the success of such a venture? Discuss their role.

Q3. (a) Indian Railways, the world's largest railway, had introduced the Computerised Reservation Systern [CRS] in n: Incestion Delhi in 1985, Presently over 750 locations all over the country have CRS terminals and 97% of the reservations are done through this system. With increase in data load, the Indian Railways adopted a decentralised database system approach with t multiple mainframe computers installed at various places in the country. Later, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) introduced web-based ticketing through its web site http://www.irctc.co.in which links to the CRS at the back end for transactions.

(i) What is dala integration? How crucial is data integration for the Indian Railways CRS?
(ii) How do we manage data integrity and data redundancy in a distributed data system like the Indian Railways CRS?
(iii) What aspects would be critical to the successful running of such a big but distributed database system?

(b) Statistics are numerical statements of facts, but all facts stated numerically are not statistics." Clarify this statement and point out which numerical statements of facts are statistics.
(c) A company is setting up an assembly line to produce 192 units per 8-hour shift. The following table identifies the work elements, times and immediate predecessors :

(i) What is the desired cycle time (in seconds)?
(ii) What is the minimum number of stations?
(iii) Draw the precedence diagram.
(iv) What are the efficiency and balance delay of the solution found?

Q4. (a) (i) The following are the monthly figures of advertising expenditure and sales of a company. It is found that advertising expenditure has impact on sales generally after 2 months. Allowing for this time lag, calculate the coefficient of correlation :

(ii) What do you mean by Type-1 and Type-11 errors? How are they interrelated? In which situations, you would not like to commit Type-I error? Why?

(b) A project manager gathered important information for a new project which is given below :

(i) Draw the network diagram by Arrow-On-Node (AON) method. Calculate the expected time and variance for cach activity.
(ii) Calculate the activity slacks and determine the critical path using the expected activity times.
(iii) What is the probability of completing the project within 23 weeks?

(c) "ERP systems are usually based on best management practices." Comment on the practical implications of this statement.

SECTION - B

Q5. (a) Are you in favour of government control over price and distribution through public distribution system? Justify your answer.
(b) In what way is the LPG era instrumental for the comprehensive growth and development of the nation?
(c) "Multi-cultural management is a challenging task in international business." Why?
(d) If a company starts acquiring unrelated businesses, in what ways should it change it mechanisms to manage the acquisitions?
(e) What strategic competencies are helping Maruti Suzuki to maintain its dominant position in the Indian Automobile Industry in spite of the fiercely competitive market Discuss.

Q6. (a) "India has corporate giants, small-scale industrial units, medium and micro enterprises. Indian regulatory bodies and funding agencies are encouraged to support all these business houses of different sizes."

In the light of the above statement, answer the following questions :

(i) Discuss the policy of the Government of India towards small-scale industries.
(ii) What would be your suggestions for the congenial growth of all these segments of business?

(b) "Country risk analysis assumes that a country is a purposeful entity managed by a government."

(i) Bring to light the major dimensions focused in country risk analysis.
(ii) In what way is this analysis helpful to corporate houses?

Q7. (a) "Ignorance of the consumer of her rights, lack of consumer movement and lack of due recognition to the consumer Organisations have been some important factors which led to the enactment of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986."

(i) Specify the consumer rights to be protected.
(ii) What sort of consumer movement has the Act contemplated?
(iii) Discuss the role of consumer organisations in consumer protection.

(b) How can service organisations internationalize themselves? What strategies would make them successful in their Endeavour?
(c) Given the problems associated with prescriptive strategic change, why is it important and what can be done to better manage this process?

Q8. (a) One of the founders of Infosys Technologies Limited has made criticisms against the Board of Management for the failure in corporate governance.

(i) What reasons has hc quoted for the failure of corporate governance? Are these reasons justifiable?
(ii) Specify the standards for good corporate governance.

(b) Indian IT companies are successful in global business.

(i) What reasons would you focus for their success?
(ii) In what way is the Indian manufacturing hub lagging behind IT companies in satisfying global consumers?

(c) Why is it important for strategy makers to understand the difference between tangible and intangible assets? Which one is more important in creating competitive advantage and why?