XAT 2017 Decision Making Test | XAT 2017 Preparation for CAT & MBA Exams

Question 1

Read the following case – let and answer the that follow Ms. Banerjee, class teacher for 12th standard, wants to send teams (based on past performance) of three students each to district, state, national, and international competition in mathematics. Till now, every student of the class has appeared in 100 school level tests. The students had following distribution of marks in the tests, in terms of “average” and “number of times a student scored cent per cent marks”.

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Ms. Banerjee has carefully studied chances of her school winning each of the competitions. Based on in depth calculations, she realized that her school is quite likely to win district level competition but has low chances of winning the international competition. She listed down the following probabilities of wins for different competitions. Prize was highest for international competition and lowest for district level competition (in that order).
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All the students are studying in the school for last twelve years. She wanted to select the best team for all four competitions (Ms. Banerjee had no other information to select students).

Which of three members should form the team for the International competition?

Question 2

Read the following case – let and answer the that follow Ms. Banerjee, class teacher for 12th standard, wants to send teams (based on past performance) of three students each to district, state, national, and international competition in mathematics. Till now, every student of the class has appeared in 100 school level tests. The students had following distribution of marks in the tests, in terms of “average” and “number of times a student scored cent per cent marks”.

$Description: E:\CAT\XAT\XAT_2014_Question_Paper_and_Ans_Key_files\image001.jpg$
Ms. Banerjee has carefully studied chances of her school winning each of the competitions. Based on in depth calculations, she realized that her school is quite likely to win district level competition but has low chances of winning the international competition. She listed down the following probabilities of wins for different competitions. Prize was highest for international competition and lowest for district level competition (in that order).
$Description: E:\CAT\XAT\XAT_2014_Question_Paper_and_Ans_Key_files\image002.jpg$
All the students are studying in the school for last twelve years. She wanted to select the best team for all four competitions (Ms. Banerjee had no other information to select students).

Which of the following members should constitute the team for the district level competition?

Question 3

Read the following case – let and answer the that follow Ms. Banerjee, class teacher for 12th standard, wants to send teams (based on past performance) of three students each to district, state, national, and international competition in mathematics. Till now, every student of the class has appeared in 100 school level tests. The students had following distribution of marks in the tests, in terms of “average” and “number of times a student scored cent per cent marks”.

$Description: E:\CAT\XAT\XAT_2014_Question_Paper_and_Ans_Key_files\image001.jpg$
Ms. Banerjee has carefully studied chances of her school winning each of the competitions. Based on in depth calculations, she realized that her school is quite likely to win district level competition but has low chances of winning the international competition. She listed down the following probabilities of wins for different competitions. Prize was highest for international competition and lowest for district level competition (in that order).
$Description: E:\CAT\XAT\XAT_2014_Question_Paper_and_Ans_Key_files\image002.jpg$
All the students are studying in the school for last twelve years. She wanted to select the best team for all four competitions (Ms. Banerjee had no other information to select students).

Ms. Banerjee has to select the team for national competition after she has selected the team for international competition. A student selected for international competition cannot be a part of national competition. Which is the best team for the national competition?

Question 4

Read the following case-let and choose the best alternative for the questions that follow.
Ajay was thinking deeply about a problem that his organization, a business consulting company, faced. Globalization had affected his company like many other companies. Despite the downturn, the current revenues remained healthy. However, Ajay knew it was inevitable that the company could not do business the same way. The complexity of managing the business had increased with time. Consultants were under pressure to deliver good and innovative solutions. The organization had consultants from different age groups having a good mix of domain and industry expertise. It was a flat organization with three levels. The biggest challenge for Ajay was to have consultants with latest knowledge who would also earn revenues. Getting additional business was a challenge as all the consultants were busy and it was very difficult to hire new consultants.

Some of the consultants were adept at apply in gold solutions to new problems. Ajay was not very sure if this would work for long. Some of the clients had complained about the performance of old and reputed consultants. Ajay was mulling over the following five solutions to tackle this problem.
1. Decrease time spent on client interaction and increase time spent for generating solutions.
2. Increase support staff to help consultants to remain updated.
3. Decrease the number of simultaneous projects handled by consultants.
4. Make it compulsory for consultants to work on inter-industry and inter-domain problems.
5. Recruit more consultants.
Which of the following would be the best sequence of decisions taken by Ajay (starting from immediate to distant)?

Question 5

Read the following case-let and choose the best alternative for the questions that follow.
Ajay was thinking deeply about a problem that his organization, a business consulting company, faced. Globalization had affected his company like many other companies. Despite the downturn, the current revenues remained healthy. However, Ajay knew it was inevitable that the company could not do business the same way. The complexity of managing the business had increased with time. Consultants were under pressure to deliver good and innovative solutions. The organization had consultants from different age groups having a good mix of domain and industry expertise. It was a flat organization with three levels. The biggest challenge for Ajay was to have consultants with latest knowledge who would also earn revenues. Getting additional business was a challenge as all the consultants were busy and it was very difficult to hire new consultants.

After Ajay implemented some of the steps mentioned above, consultants wanted to renegotiate their contract with the organization. It seems that the organization had never mentioned that consultants have to work across industries and domains. Some of the old consultants were reluctant to change their ways, while many of the younger consultants were willing to follow Ajay’s advice. Which of the following decision can be taken by Ajay to handle this situation?

Question 6

Read the following case-let and choose the best alternative for the questions that follow.
Ajay was thinking deeply about a problem that his organization, a business consulting company, faced. Globalization had affected his company like many other companies. Despite the downturn, the current revenues remained healthy. However, Ajay knew it was inevitable that the company could not do business the same way. The complexity of managing the business had increased with time. Consultants were under pressure to deliver good and innovative solutions. The organization had consultants from different age groups having a good mix of domain and industry expertise. It was a flat organization with three levels. The biggest challenge for Ajay was to have consultants with latest knowledge who would also earn revenues. Getting additional business was a challenge as all the consultants were busy and it was very difficult to hire new consultants.

Ajay was to retire in five years and he wanted to leave behind a legacy. Order the following activities, from the most important to the least important, that Ajay should undertake in next five year:
1. Do nothing.
2. Set a future direction for the organization in these challenging times.
3. Benchmark performance with respect to the best consulting company in industry.
4. Empower senior consultants and at the same time seek opinion of all others for handling future challenges.
5. Infuse fresh thinking by hiring outsiders.
Choose the best option from the following sequences