Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Core competencies and focus are now the mantras of corporate strategists in Western economies. But while managers in the West have dismantled many conglomerates assembled in the 1960s and 1970s, the large, diversified business group remains the dominant form of enterprise throughout most emerging markets. Some groups operate as holding companies with full ownership in many enterprises, others are collections of publicly traded companies, but all have some degree of central control.

As emerging markets open up to global competition, consultants and foreign investors are increasingly pressuring these groups to conform to Western practice by scaling back the scope of their business activities. The conglomerate is the dinosaur of organizational design, they argue, too unwieldy and slow to compete in today's fast-paced markets. Already a number of executives have decided to break up their groups in order to show that they are focusing on only a few core businesses. 

There are reasons to worry about this trend. Focus is good advice in New York or London, but something important gets lost in translation when that advice is given to groups in emerging markets. Western companies take for granted a range of institutions that support their business activities, but many of these institutions are absent in other regions of the world. Without effective securities regulation and venture capital firms, for example, focused companies may be unable to raise adequate financing; and without strong educational institutions, they will struggle to hire skilled employees.

Communicating with customers is difficult when the local infrastructure is poor, and unpredictable government behavior can stymie any operation, although a focused strategy may enable a company to perform a few activities well, companies in emerging markets must take responsibility for a wide range of functions in order to do business effectively. 

In the case of product markets, buyers and sellers usually suffer from a severe dearth of information for three reasons. First, the communications infrastructure in emerging markets is often under-developed. Even as wireless communication spreads throughout the West, vast stretches in countries such as China and India remain without telephones. Power shortages often render the modes of communication that do exist ineffective. The postal service is typically inefficient, slow, or unreliable; and the private sector rarely provides efficient courier services. High rates of illiteracy make it difficult for marketers to communicate effectively with customers. 

Second, even when information about products does get around, there are no mechanisms to corroborate the claims made by sellers. Independent consumer - information organizations are rare, and government watchdog agencies are of little use. The few analysts who rate products are generally less sophisticated than their counterparts in advanced economies. 

Third, consumers have no redress mechanisms if a product does not deliver on its promise. Law enforcement is often capricious and so slow that few who assign any value to time would resort to it. Unlike in advanced markets, there are few extrajudicial arbitration mechanisms to which one can appeal. 

As a result of this lack of information, companies in emerging markets face much higher costs in building credible brands than their counterparts in advanced economies. In turn, established brands wield tremendous power. A conglomerate with a reputation for quality products and services can use its group name to enter new businesses, even if those businesses are completely unrelated to its current lines. Groups also have an advantage when they do try to build up a brand because they can spread the cost of maintaining it across multiple lines of business. Such groups then have a greater incentive not to damage brand quality in anyone business because they will pay the price in their other businesses as well.

What suggestions have been cited by the writer in regard to raising adequate financing and hiring skilled employees ?

Direction: In the following questions, out of the four alternatives, choose the one which can be substituted for the given words/sentence.
Misappropriation of money

Directions: In the following questions, some of the sentences have errors and some have none. Find out which part of a sentence has an error. The number of that part is your answer. Your answer is (D) i.e. No error.

(A) I keep my cool/ (B) and never loose my temper/ (C) even when provoked/ (D) No error.

Select the option that expresses the given sentence in passive voice.

The teacher gave the question paper.

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
The problem of water pollution by pesticides can be understood only in context, as part of the world to which it belongs- the pollution of the total environment of making. The pollution entering our waterways comes from many sources, radioactive wastes from reactors, laboratories, and hospitals; fallout from nuclear explosions; domestic wastes from cities and towns; chemical wastes from factories. To these is added a new kind of fallout the chemical sprays applied to crop lands and gardens, forests and fields. Many of the chemical agents in this alarming melange initiate and augment the harmful effects of radiation, and within the group of chemicals themselves there are sinister and little- understood interactions, transformations, and summations of effect.
Even since the chemists began to manufacture substances that nature never invented, the problems of water purification have become complex and the danger to user of water has increased. As we have seen, the production of these synthetic chemicals in large volume begin in the 1940’s. It has now reached such proportion that an appalling deluge of chemical pollution is daily poured into the nation’s waterways. When inextricably mixed with domestic and other wastes discharged into the same water, these chemicals sometimes defy detection by the methods in ordinary use by purification plants. Most of them are so complex that they cannot be identified. In rivers, a really incredible variety of pollutants combine to produce deposits that sanitary engineers can only despairingly refer to as “gunk”.

The word ‘gunk’ in the last line refers:

Direction (1-5): Given below is a passage in which each line is numbered (1)-(5). Four words in each sentence are highlighted. Find out which word is not grammatically/contextually suitable in each of the numbered sentences.
(1) There is a need to question those in power as it is fundamental to preserve the nation and a truthful democratic society, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Thursday. (2) He also underscored the need for more accommodation in public discourse as democracy will be the “loser” if people refused to hear voices other than their own. (3) Delivering the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Lecture, he said all stakeholders in a democratic system, from parties to business leaders, citizens to institutions, have to realise that asking questions is good and healthy. (4) Mukherjee said people in power, across the spectrum of politics, business or civil society, by virtue of the position they enjoy, tend to dominate the discourse and effect its direction. (5) He said Indian civilisation has always celebrated plurality and promoted tolerance as these have been binding people together for centuries despite negligible differences.

Which of the following words is not appropriate in Sentence 4?

The following sentence has been split into segments. One of them may contain an error. Identify the segment that contains a grammatical error. If you don’t find any error, mark ‘No error’ as your answer.

No one were / present when I / entered the hall.

Direction : Rearrange the following six sentences A, B, C, D, E and F in the proper sequence to form a meaningful paragraph; then answer the questions given below them.
(A) We were interested by contrast in understanding what lessons actual teams and non-teams had for others to choose to struggle with change and performance.
(B) Still, we suspected that most of these focused on persuading readers that "teams are important".
(C) After all, we thought teams are a well- known subject and there must be a thousand books on the subject already.
(D) By going down this path we hoped to discover something to say that was different from most books on the subject.
(E) We approached the idea of a book on teams cautiously.
(F) Alternatively, they focussed on providing you advice on building teams as an objective in itself. 

Which of the following will be the FIFTH sentence ?