Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer for each question.
Management education gained new academic stature within US Universities and greater respect from outside during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Some observers attribute the competitive superiority of US corporations to the quality of business education. In 1978, a management professor, Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon University, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in decision theory. And the popularity of business education continued to grow, since 1960, the number of master’s degrees awarded annually has grown from under 5000 to over 50,000 in the mid 1980’s as the MBA has become known as ‘the passport to the good life’.
By the 1980’s, however, US business schools faced critics who charged that learning had little relevance to real business problems. Some went so far as to blame business schools for the decline in US competitiveness.
Amidst the criticisms, four distinct arguments may be discerned. The first is that business schools must be either unnecessary or deleterious because Japan does so well without them. Underlying this argument is the idea that management ability cannot be taught, one is either born with it or must acquire it over years of practical experience. A second argument is that business schools are overly academic and theoretical.
They teach quantitative models that have little application to real world problems. Third, they give inadequate attention to shop floor issues, to production processes and to management resources. Finally, it is argued that the encourage undesirable attitudes in students, such as placing value on the short term and ‘bottom line’ targets, while neglecting longer term development criteria. In summary, some business executives complain that MBAs are incapable of handing day to day operational decisions, unable to communicate and to motivate people, and unwillingly to accept responsibility for following through on implementation plans. We shall analyze these criticisms after having reviewed experiences in other countries.
In contrast to the expansion and development of business education in the United States and more recently in Europe, Japanese business schools graduate no more than two hundred MBAs each year. The Keio Business School (KBS) was the only graduate school of management in the entire country until the mid 1970’s and it still boasts the only two year masters programme. The absence of business schools in Japan would appear in contradiction with the high priority placed upon learning by its Confucian culture. Confucian colleges taught administrative skills as early as 1630 and Japan wholeheartedly accepted Western learning following the Meiji restoration of 1868 when hundreds of students were dispatched to universities in US, Germany, England and France to learn the secrets of western technology and modernization. Moreover, the Japanese educational system is highly developed and intensely competitive and can be credited for raising the literary and mathematical abilities of the Japanese to the highest level in the world.
Until recently, Japan corporations have not been interested in using either local or foreign business schools for the development of their future executives. Their in-company training programs have sought the socialization of newcomers, the younger the better. The training is highly specific and those who receive it have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit. The prevailing belief, says Imai, ‘is a management should be born out of experience and many years of effort and not learnt from educational institutions.’ A 1960 survey of Japanese senior executives confirmed that a majority (54%) believed that managerial capabilities can be attained only on the job and not in universities.
However, this view seems to be changing: the same survey revealed that even as early as 1960. 37% of senior executives felt that the universities should teach integrated professional management. In the 1980’s a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multi nationalisation of Japanese business are making it difficult for many companies to rely solely upon internally trained managers. This has led to a rapid growth of local business programmes and a greater use of American MBA programmes. In 1982-83, the Japanese comprised the largest single group of foreign students at Wharton, where they not only learnt the latest techniques of financial analysis, but also developed worldwide contacts through their classmates and became Americanized, something highly useful in future negotiations. The Japanese, then do not ‘do without’ business schools, as is sometimes contended. But the process of selecting and orienting new graduates, even MBAs, into corporations is radically different than in the US. Rather than being placed in highly paying staff positions, new Japanese recruits are assigned responsibility for operational and even
menial tasks. Success is based upon Japan’s system of highly competitive recruitment and intensive incompany management development, which in turn are grounded in its tradition of universal and rigorous academic education, life-long employment and strong group identification.
The harmony among these traditional elements has made Japanese industry highly productive and given corporate leadership a long term view. It is true that this has been achieved without much attention to university business education, but extraordinary attention has been devoted to the development of managerial skills, both within the company and through participation in programmes sponsored by the Productivity Center and other similar organizations.
The author argues that the Japanese system
Show Hint
- is better than the American system.
- is highly productive and gives corporate leadership a long term view as a result of its strong traditions.
- is slowly becoming Americanized.
- succeeds without business schools, whereas the US system fails because of it.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
The growth of popularity of business schools among students was most probably due to
Show Hint
- Herbert A. Simon a management professor winning the Nobel Prize in economics.
- the gain in academic stature.
- the large number of MBA degree awarded.
- a perception that it was a ‘passport to good life.’
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
According to the passage
Show Hint
- learning, which was useful in the 1960’s and 1970’s became irrelevant in the 1980’s.
- management education faced criticisms in the 1980’s.
- business schools are insensitive to the needs of industry.
- by the 1980’s business schools contributed to the decline in US competitiveness.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
A criticism that management education did not face was that
Show Hint
- it imparted poor quantitative skills to MBAs.
- it was unnecessarily and deleterious.
- it was irrevocably irrelevant.
- it inculcated undesirable attitudes in students.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The absence of business schools in Japan
Show Hint
- is due to the prevalent belief that management ability can only be acquired over years of practical experience.
- was due to the high priority placed on learning as opposed to doing in Confucian culture.
- is hard to explain for the proponents of business education.
- contributed a great deal to their success in international trade and business.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Instead, it is acquired gradually through hands-on experience under senior mentorship.
This practical orientation is deeply rooted in Japanese values and workplace culture, where seniority and continuous observation matter more than formal education.
Hence, Japan historically lacked formal business schools because practical experience was considered superior.
The 1960’s and 1970’s can best be described as a period
Show Hint
- when quality business education contributed to the superiority of US corporations.
- when the number of MBAs rose from under 5,000 to over 50,000.
- when management education gained new academic stature and greater respect.
- when the MBA became more disreputable.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
This was a time when business schools introduced analytical frameworks, strategic thinking, and behavioral sciences into management teaching.
There was a growing belief that management could be studied like a science, which led to higher respect for business degrees.
Academic institutions invested heavily in research and business case methods, giving the MBA intellectual legitimacy.
US business schools faced criticism in the 1980’s because
Show Hint
- of the decline in Japanese competitiveness.
- many critics felt the learning had little relevance to business problems.
- people realized that management ability cannot be taught.
- MBAs were unwilling to accept responsibility for implementation on the shop floor.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
Critics argued that graduates were proficient in theory but failed to demonstrate leadership or execution in practical scenarios.
This critique gained weight as American corporations began to lag behind their Japanese counterparts, which emphasized hands-on training.
Thus, MBAs were seen as out-of-touch with real industry demands.
Training programmes in Japanese corporations have
Show Hint
- been based upon Confucian culture.
- sought the socialization of newcomers.
- been targeted at people who have neither the capacity nor the incentive to quit.
- been teaching people to do menial tasks.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
The focus is on integrating newcomers into the company’s culture and making them part of a collective identity.
This socialization process teaches cooperation, long-term commitment, and company loyalty.
Such a system emphasizes harmony and consistency over individual performance alone.
The Japanese modified their views on management education because of
Show Hint
- greater exposure to US MBA programmes.
- the need to develop worldwide contacts and become Americanized.
- the outstanding success of business schools in the US during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
- a combination of increased competitive pressures and greater multi-nationalisation of Japanese business.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
However, increased competition in global markets and the need to operate across multinational settings forced a shift in this attitude.
As Japanese companies began expanding internationally, they faced the necessity to align with global standards, including Western business practices.
This pressure made them adopt formal management education and MBA-like training, influenced by both market competition and the global corporate environment.
The Japanese were initially able to do without business schools as a result of
Show Hint
- their highly developed and intensively competitive education system.
- dispatching hundreds of Western technology and modernization.
- their highly specific in-company training programmes.
- prevailing beliefs regarding educational institutions.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
As a result, students entered companies with a strong foundational education and were further shaped by rigorous in-house corporate training.
This system produced highly capable professionals without formal business school intervention.
Thus, their advanced national education system compensated for the absence of standalone business schools.
The main difference between US and Japanese corporations is
Show Hint
- that one employs MBAs, the other does not.
- that US corporations do not employ Japanese people.
- that US corporations pay more to fresh recruits.
- in the process of selecting and orienting new recruits.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
In contrast, Japanese companies place great emphasis on long orientation, internal mentoring, and slowly integrating recruits.
This difference reflects broader cultural priorities — individual performance in the US versus group harmony and long-term growth in Japan.
The author argues that
Show Hint
- Japanese do not do without business schools as is generally perceived.
- Japanese corporations do not hire MBAs because of traditions of universal and rigorous academic education, life long employment and strong group identification.
- placing MBAs in operational and menial tasks is a major factor in Japanese business success.
- US corporations should emulate the Japanese and change the way new recruits are induced.
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
The author emphasizes that Japan has developed mechanisms for management training that substitute for MBAs.
These include rigorous internal programs, senior mentorship, and experiential knowledge acquisition.
Hence, the argument is not that Japan ignores management education, but that it handles it differently than the US model.
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
- ”In recent years, technological advancements in AI and machine learning have fundamentally altered how we approach daily tasks. The growing reliance on these systems brings both challenges and opportunities, especially in areas like automation, healthcare, and customer service.”
What is the primary concern regarding the increased use of AI in daily tasks as mentioned in the passage?
- NMAT - 2025
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
Meta is recalibrating content on its social media platforms as the political tide has turned in Washington, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing last week that his company plans to fire its US fact-checkers. Fact-checking evolved in response to allegations of misinformation and is being watered down in response to accusations of censorship. Social media does not have solutions to either. Community review — introduced by Elon Musk at X and planned by Zuckerberg for Facebook and Instagram — is not a significant improvement over fact-checking. Having Washington lean on foreign governments over content moderation does not benefit free speech. Yet, that is the nature of the social media beast, designed to amplify bias.
Information and misinformation continue to jostle on social media at the mercy of user discretion. Social media now has enough control over all other forms of media to broaden its reach. It is the connective tissue for mass consumption of entertainment, and alternative platforms are reworking their engagement with social media. Technologies are shaping up to drive this advantage further through synthetic content targeted precisely at its intended audience. Meta’s algorithm will now play up politics because it is the flavour of the season.
The Achilles’ Heel of social media is informed choice which could turn against misinformation. Its move away from content moderation is driven by the need to be more inclusive, yet unfiltered content can push users away from social media towards legacy forms that have better moderation systems in place. Lawmakers across the world are unlikely to give social media a free run, even if Donald Trump is working on their case. Protections have already been put in place across jurisdictions over misinformation. These may be difficult to dismantle, even if the Republicans pull US-owned social media companies further to the right.
Media consumption is, in essence, evidence-based judgement that mediums must adapt to. Content moderation, not free speech, is the adaptation mechanism. Musk and Zuckerberg are not exempt- IPMAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, commodities available for consumption are not inherently negative things. Baudrillard tried to interpret consumption in modern societies by engaging with the ’cargo myth’ prevalent among the indigenous Melanesian people living in the South Pacific. The Melanesians did not know what aeroplanes were. However,they saw that these winged entities descended from the air for white people and appeared to make them happy. They also noted that aeroplanes never descended for the Melanesian people. The Melanesian natives noted that the white people had placed objects similar to the aeroplane on the ground. They concluded that these objects were attracting the aeroplanes in the air and bringing them to the ground. Through a magical process, the aeroplanes were bringing plenty to the white people and making them happy. The Melanesian people concluded that they would need to place objects that simulated the aeroplane on the ground and attract them from the air. Baudrillard believes that the cargo myth holds an important analogy for the ways in which consumers engage with objects of consumption.
According to Baudrillard, the modern consumer ”sets in place a whole array of sham objects, of characteristic signs of happiness, and then waits for happiness to alight”. For instance, modern consumers believe that they will get happiness if they buy the latest available version of a mobile phone or automobile. However, consumption does not usually lead to happiness. While consumers should ideally be blaming their heightened expectations for their lack of happiness, they blame the commodity instead.
They feel that they should have waited for the next version of a mobile phone or automobile before buying the one they did. The version they bought is somehow inferior and therefore cannot make them happy. Baudrillard argues that consumers have replaced ’real’ happiness with ’signs’ of happiness. This results in the endless deferment of the arrival of total happiness. In Baudrillard’s words, ”in everyday practice, the blessings of consumption are not experienced as resulting from work or from a production process; they are experienced as a miracle”. Modern consumers view consumption in the same magical way as the Melanesian people viewed the aeroplanes in the cargo myth. Television commercials also present objects of consumption as miracles. As a result, commodities appear to be distanced from the social processes which lead to their production. In effect, objects of consumption are divorced from the reality which produces them.- IPMAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: Read the following transcript and choose the answer that is closest to each of the questions that are based on the transcript.
Lucia Rahilly (Global Editorial Director, The McKinsey Podcast): Today we’re talking about the next big arenas of competition, about the industries that will matter most in the global business landscape, which you describe as arenas of competition. What do we mean when we use this term?
Chris Bradley (Director, McKinsey Global Institute): If I go back and look at the top ten companies in 2005, they were in traditional industries such as oil and gas, retail, industrials, and pharmaceuticals. The average company was worth about $250 billion. If I advance the clock forward to 2020, nine in ten of those companies have been replaced, and by companies that are eight times bigger than the old guards.
And this new batch of companies comes from these new arenas or competitive sectors. In fact, they’re so different that we have a nickname for them. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, it’s wizards versus muggles.
Arena industries are wizardish; we found that there’s a set of industries that play by very different set of economic rules and get very different results, while the rest, the muggles (even though they run the world, finance the world, and energize the world), play by a more traditional set of economic rules.
Lucia Rahilly: Could we put a finer point on what is novel or different about the lens that you applied to determine what’s a wizard and what’s a muggle?
Chris Bradley: Wizards are defined by growth and dynamism. We looked at where value is flowing and the places where value is moving. And where is the value flowing? What we see is that this set of wizards, which represent about ten percent of industries, hog 45 percent of the growth in market cap. But there’s another dimension or axis too, which is dynamism. That is measured by a new metric we’ve come up with called the ”shuffle rate.” How much does the bottom move to the top? It turns out that in this set of wizardish industries, or arenas, the shuffle rate is much higher than it is in the traditional industry.
Lucia Rahilly: So, where are we seeing the most profit?
Chris Bradley: The economic profit, which is the profit you make minus the cost for the capital you employ is in the wizard industries. It’s where R&D happens; they’re two times more R&D intensive. They’re big stars, the nebulae, where new business is born.- IPMAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
- On the first day of January 2025, the Indian Meteorological Department [IMD] announced that 2024 was the hottest year on record. A study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water shows that nearly eight out of ten Indians live in districts that are at risk of either a flood, a cyclone, or a drought. Nearly twenty three States in India are heatwave-prone. In the summer of 2024, India recorded more than 44,000 cases of heatstroke and over 300 heat-related mortalities, as per the bulletin of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Water reservoirs and the energy demand that keeps India powered are impacted too. During a ten-day long heatwave in Delhi, peak power demand was 16% higher than the previous year.
- IPMAT - 2025
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in CAT exam
- Let $x$, $y$, and $z$ be real numbers satisfying
\(4(x^2 + y^2 + z^2) = a,\)
\(4(x - y - z) = 3 + a.\)
Then $a$ equals ?- CAT - 2024
- Algebra
- The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and be learned at so early an age, that they appear not to be constructed – the effect of an articulation between sign and referent – but to be ‘naturally’ given. Simple visual signs appear to have achieved a ‘near-universality’ in this sense: though evidence remains that even apparently ‘natural’ visual codes are culture specific. However, this does not mean that no codes have intervened; rather, that the codes have been profoundly naturalized. The operation of naturalized codes reveals not the transparency and ‘naturalness’ of language but the depth, the habituation and the near-universality of the codes in use. They produce apparently ‘natural’ recognitions. This has the (ideological) effect of concealing the practices of coding which are present.- CAT - 2024
- Para Summary
- There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Comprehending a wide range of emotions, Renaissance music nevertheless portrayed all emotions in a balanced and moderate fashion.
Paragraph: A volume of translated Italian madrigals were published in London during the year of 1588. This sudden public interest facilitated a surge of English Madrigal writing as well as a spurt of other secular music writing and publication. ___(1)___. This music boom lasted for thirty years and was as much a golden age of music as British literature was with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. ___(2)___. The rebirth in both literature and music originated in Italy and migrated to England; the English madrigal became more humorous and lighter in England as compared to Italy. Renaissance music was mostly polyphonic in texture. ___(3)___. Extreme use of and contrasts in dynamics, rhythm, and tone colour do not occur. ___(4)___. The rhythms in Renaissance music tend to have a smooth, soft flow instead of a sharp, well-defined pulse of accents.- CAT - 2024
- Para Completion
- There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Science has officially crowned us superior to our early-rising brethren. Paragraph: My fellow night owls, grab a strong cup of coffee and gather around: I have great news. ___(1)___. For a long time, our kind has been unfairly maligned. Stereotyped as lazy and undisciplined. Told we ought to be morning larks. Advised to go to bed early so we can wake before 5am and run a marathon before breakfast like all high-flyers seem to do. Now, however, we are having the last laugh. ___(2)___. It may be a tad more complicated than that. A study published last week, which you may have already seen while scrolling at 1am, suggests that staying up late could be good for brain power. ___(3)___. Is this study a thinly veiled PR exercise conducted by a caffeine-pill company? Nope, it’s legit. ___(4)___. Research led by academics at Imperial College London studied data on more than 26,000 people and found that “self-declared ‘night owls’ generally tend to have higher cognitive scores”.- CAT - 2024
- Para Completion
- There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Understanding central Asia’s role helps developments make more sense not only across Asia but in Europe, the Americas and Africa.
Paragraph: The nations of the Silk Roads are sometimes called ‘developing countries’, but they are actually some of the world’s most highly developed countries, the very crossroads of civilization, in advanced states of disrepair. ___(1)___. These countries lie at the centre of global affairs: they have since the beginning of history. Running across the spine of Asia, they form a web of connections fanning out in every direction, routes along which pilgrims and warriors, nomads and merchants have travelled, goods and produce have been bought and sold, and ideas exchanged, adapted and refined. ___(2)___ .They have carried not only prosperity, but also death and violence, disease and disaster. ___(3)___. The Silk Roads are the world’s central nervous system, connecting otherwise far-flung peoples and places…. ___(4)___. It allows us to see patterns and links, causes and effects that remain invisible if one looks only at Europe, or North America.- CAT - 2024
- Para Completion