Reading Comprehension

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Great emotional and intellectual resources are demanded in quarrels, stamina helps, as does a capacity for obsession. But no one is born a good quarreler; the craft must be learnt. There are two generally recognized apprenticeships. First, and universally preferred, is a long childhood spent in the company of fractious siblings. After several years of rainy afternoons, brothers and sisters develop a sure feel for the tactics of attrition and the niceties of strategy so necessary in first–rate quarrelling.
The only child, or the child of peaceful or repressed households, is likely to grow up failing to understand that quarrels, unlike arguments, are not about anything, least of all the pursuit of truth. The apparent subject of a quarrel is a mere pretext; the real business is the quarrel itself.
Essentially, adversaries in a quarrel are out to establish or rescue their dignity.
Hence the elementary principle: anything may be said. The unschooled, probably no less quarrelsome by inclination than anyone else, may spend an hour with knocking heart, sifting the consequences of calling this old acquaintance a lying fraud, Too late? With a cheerful wave the old acquaintance has left the room. Those who miss their first apprenticeship may care to enroll in the second, the bad marriage. This can be perilous for the neophyte; the mutual intimacy of spouses makes them at once more vulnerable and more dangerous in attack. Once sex is involved, the stakes are higher all round. And there is an unspoken rule that those who love, or have loved. One another are granted a license for unlimited beastliness such as is denied to mere sworn enemies. For all that, some of our most tenacious black belt quarrelers have come to it late in life and mastered every throw, from the Crushing Silence to the Gloating Apology, in less than ten years of marriage.
A quarrel may last years. Among brooding types with time on their hands like writers, half a lifetime is not uncommon. In its most refined form, a quarrel may consist of the participants not talking to each other. They will need to scheme laboriously to appear in public together to register their silence.
Brief, violent quarrels are also known as rows. In all cases the essential ingredient remains the same; the original cause must be forgotten as soon as possible. From here on, dignity, pride, self–esteem, honour are the crucial issues, which is why quarrelling, like jealousy, is an all–consuming business, virtually a profession. For, the quarreler’s very self–hood is on the line. To lose an argument is a brief disappointment, much like losing a game of tennis; but to be crushed in a quarrel…rather bite off your tongue and spread it at your opponent’s feet.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Computers and electronic communications are allowing many people to use their homes as offices. But offices will never disappear entirely. Instead, the office of the future may become like home.
AMERICAN managers who want to get more out of their white–collar workforce will be in for a shock if they seek advice from Frank Becker, a professor at Cornell University who studies the patterns of office work.
Mr. Becker is one of a group of academics and consultants trying to make companies more productive by linking new office technology to a better understanding of how employees work. The forecast of a decade ago that computers would increase office productivity, reduce white–collar payrolls and help the remaining staff to work better – have proved much too hopeful. Mr. Becker, who unfortunately calls himself an "organizational ecologist", is trying to find out why the huge sums of money spent on office automation have produced such disappointing results. He is leading a two–year study on offices called “Workscape 21”. Sponsored by Cornell, the study is financed by firms in America, Japan, Britain and Holland.
Even before completing the study, Mr. Becker has firm ideas about how the office of the future should look. Technology, better communications, rising inner–city land costs (once today's property bust is over) and the trials of commuting will, he predicts, prompt more workers to split time between a central office, a computer–equipped home office and perhaps a satellite office in a suburban business park.
Even those few workers based at the central office will be more mobile, moving between different work stations as their tasks change, taking their mobile telephones with them. This will cut the amount of wasted office space, says Mr. Becker. It will also improve communications between employees, by pushing them out of the tight and unchanging circle of people who sit nearby.
Mr. Becker predicts that the central office will become mainly a place where workers from satellite and home–based offices meet to discuss ideas and to reaffirm their loyalty to fellow employees and the company. This will require new thoughts about the layout of office buildings. Now, spaces for copying machines, coffee rooms, meetings and reception areas usually come second to the offices in which people spend most of the day working. Mr. Becker sees these common areas gradually becoming the heart of an office. He even believes that many central offices will come to resemble a hotel lobby or somebody's home – a disturbing thought, that, for people who find in the calm of the office a refuge from the rigors of family life.
Managers, says Mr. Becker, will also have to abandon their long–cherished notion that a productive employee is an employee that can be seen. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant. Technology and new patterns of office use will make companies judge people by what they do, not by where they spend their time.
That does not mean the end of the office, just its transformation into a social centre. Thomas Alien, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied communication patterns between people, in the admittedly artificial environment of research laboratories. His less–than–startling conclusion is that people talk to each other more when they work in close proximity. Workers on different floors might as well be in different buildings, so rarely do they see one another.
Because buildings are seldom designed with employee–to–employee contact in mind, co–workers may barely know someone a few yards away, even though they have related jobs.
To show how this can be changed, Mr. Alien has helped one pharmaceutical firm to establish an experimental office designed to get chemists and biologists to talk more to each other. A similar bunch of employees, serving as a control group, is occupying a more conventional building. The two groups will be compared for such things as the time they take to complete reports and the rate at which they find new chemical compounds.
New ideas about offices are catching on elsewhere. IBM's British division will soon have all 1,000 of its headquarters’ employees working in "non–territorial" offices – places where they have no desk to call their own. And in California TRW and GTE arc trying to help employees cope with traffic problems and work more efficiently by setting up satellite offices. Digital Equipment Corp's subsidiary in Finland has equipped offices with reclining chairs and scuffed sofas to make them more comfortable and conducive to informal conversations and the swapping of ideas. Companies such as Apple and General Electric are experimenting along similar lines.
Steelcase, a manufacturer of office furniture, is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts and designs. The company's research center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a $111 m building completed in 1989. It is designed around a series of office "neighborhoods" that put marketing, manufacturing and design people close to each other so that they can find it easier to discuss ideas and solve problems. Employees on different floors can see one another through glass, and easily go from floor to floor via escalators.
Top managers work in a cluster of offices that are wrapped around an atrium in the middle of the building, rather than occupying the usual suite of top–floor offices. They can see, and be seen by, the people they manage. Mr. Allen, who worked as a consultant to Steelcase and argued vigorously for placing the bosses' offices in the middle of the building, believes it will improve managers' chances of bumping into the people they lead. "Who knows," he says, "they might even talk to them."
Enriching as it is to be constantly under the gaze of your superiors, Steelcase employees are also rather keen on 14 "think–tanks" located on the sixth floor of the pyramid. Intended for intense, individual work, these small offices are equipped with a computer, but no telephone. Available on a first–come, first–served basis, these havens are rarely unoccupied. Sometimes even the most communicative employee just wants to be left alone.

How has automation affected office productivity over the last decade?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Computers and electronic communications are allowing many people to use their homes as offices. But offices will never disappear entirely. Instead, the office of the future may become like home.
AMERICAN managers who want to get more out of their white–collar workforce will be in for a shock if they seek advice from Frank Becker, a professor at Cornell University who studies the patterns of office work.
Mr. Becker is one of a group of academics and consultants trying to make companies more productive by linking new office technology to a better understanding of how employees work. The forecast of a decade ago that computers would increase office productivity, reduce white–collar payrolls and help the remaining staff to work better – have proved much too hopeful. Mr. Becker, who unfortunately calls himself an "organizational ecologist", is trying to find out why the huge sums of money spent on office automation have produced such disappointing results. He is leading a two–year study on offices called “Workscape 21”. Sponsored by Cornell, the study is financed by firms in America, Japan, Britain and Holland.
Even before completing the study, Mr. Becker has firm ideas about how the office of the future should look. Technology, better communications, rising inner–city land costs (once today's property bust is over) and the trials of commuting will, he predicts, prompt more workers to split time between a central office, a computer–equipped home office and perhaps a satellite office in a suburban business park.
Even those few workers based at the central office will be more mobile, moving between different work stations as their tasks change, taking their mobile telephones with them. This will cut the amount of wasted office space, says Mr. Becker. It will also improve communications between employees, by pushing them out of the tight and unchanging circle of people who sit nearby.
Mr. Becker predicts that the central office will become mainly a place where workers from satellite and home–based offices meet to discuss ideas and to reaffirm their loyalty to fellow employees and the company. This will require new thoughts about the layout of office buildings. Now, spaces for copying machines, coffee rooms, meetings and reception areas usually come second to the offices in which people spend most of the day working. Mr. Becker sees these common areas gradually becoming the heart of an office. He even believes that many central offices will come to resemble a hotel lobby or somebody's home – a disturbing thought, that, for people who find in the calm of the office a refuge from the rigors of family life.
Managers, says Mr. Becker, will also have to abandon their long–cherished notion that a productive employee is an employee that can be seen. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant. Technology and new patterns of office use will make companies judge people by what they do, not by where they spend their time.
That does not mean the end of the office, just its transformation into a social centre. Thomas Alien, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied communication patterns between people, in the admittedly artificial environment of research laboratories. His less–than–startling conclusion is that people talk to each other more when they work in close proximity. Workers on different floors might as well be in different buildings, so rarely do they see one another.
Because buildings are seldom designed with employee–to–employee contact in mind, co–workers may barely know someone a few yards away, even though they have related jobs.
To show how this can be changed, Mr. Alien has helped one pharmaceutical firm to establish an experimental office designed to get chemists and biologists to talk more to each other. A similar bunch of employees, serving as a control group, is occupying a more conventional building. The two groups will be compared for such things as the time they take to complete reports and the rate at which they find new chemical compounds.
New ideas about offices are catching on elsewhere. IBM's British division will soon have all 1,000 of its headquarters’ employees working in "non–territorial" offices – places where they have no desk to call their own. And in California TRW and GTE arc trying to help employees cope with traffic problems and work more efficiently by setting up satellite offices. Digital Equipment Corp's subsidiary in Finland has equipped offices with reclining chairs and scuffed sofas to make them more comfortable and conducive to informal conversations and the swapping of ideas. Companies such as Apple and General Electric are experimenting along similar lines.
Steelcase, a manufacturer of office furniture, is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts and designs. The company's research center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a $111 m building completed in 1989. It is designed around a series of office "neighborhoods" that put marketing, manufacturing and design people close to each other so that they can find it easier to discuss ideas and solve problems. Employees on different floors can see one another through glass, and easily go from floor to floor via escalators.
Top managers work in a cluster of offices that are wrapped around an atrium in the middle of the building, rather than occupying the usual suite of top–floor offices. They can see, and be seen by, the people they manage. Mr. Allen, who worked as a consultant to Steelcase and argued vigorously for placing the bosses' offices in the middle of the building, believes it will improve managers' chances of bumping into the people they lead. "Who knows," he says, "they might even talk to them."
Enriching as it is to be constantly under the gaze of your superiors, Steelcase employees are also rather keen on 14 "think–tanks" located on the sixth floor of the pyramid. Intended for intense, individual work, these small offices are equipped with a computer, but no telephone. Available on a first–come, first–served basis, these havens are rarely unoccupied. Sometimes even the most communicative employee just wants to be left alone.

When quarrelling, both children and married couples may, according to the writer,

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Great emotional and intellectual resources are demanded in quarrels, stamina helps, as does a capacity for obsession. But no one is born a good quarreler; the craft must be learnt. There are two generally recognized apprenticeships. First, and universally preferred, is a long childhood spent in the company of fractious siblings. After several years of rainy afternoons, brothers and sisters develop a sure feel for the tactics of attrition and the niceties of strategy so necessary in first–rate quarrelling.
The only child, or the child of peaceful or repressed households, is likely to grow up failing to understand that quarrels, unlike arguments, are not about anything, least of all the pursuit of truth. The apparent subject of a quarrel is a mere pretext; the real business is the quarrel itself.
Essentially, adversaries in a quarrel are out to establish or rescue their dignity.
Hence the elementary principle: anything may be said. The unschooled, probably no less quarrelsome by inclination than anyone else, may spend an hour with knocking heart, sifting the consequences of calling this old acquaintance a lying fraud, Too late? With a cheerful wave the old acquaintance has left the room. Those who miss their first apprenticeship may care to enroll in the second, the bad marriage. This can be perilous for the neophyte; the mutual intimacy of spouses makes them at once more vulnerable and more dangerous in attack. Once sex is involved, the stakes are higher all round. And there is an unspoken rule that those who love, or have loved. One another are granted a license for unlimited beastliness such as is denied to mere sworn enemies. For all that, some of our most tenacious black belt quarrelers have come to it late in life and mastered every throw, from the Crushing Silence to the Gloating Apology, in less than ten years of marriage.
A quarrel may last years. Among brooding types with time on their hands like writers, half a lifetime is not uncommon. In its most refined form, a quarrel may consist of the participants not talking to each other. They will need to scheme laboriously to appear in public together to register their silence.
Brief, violent quarrels are also known as rows. In all cases the essential ingredient remains the same; the original cause must be forgotten as soon as possible. From here on, dignity, pride, self–esteem, honour are the crucial issues, which is why quarrelling, like jealousy, is an all–consuming business, virtually a profession. For, the quarreler’s very self–hood is on the line. To lose an argument is a brief disappointment, much like losing a game of tennis; but to be crushed in a quarrel…rather bite off your tongue and spread it at your opponent’s feet.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Great emotional and intellectual resources are demanded in quarrels, stamina helps, as does a capacity for obsession. But no one is born a good quarreler; the craft must be learnt. There are two generally recognized apprenticeships. First, and universally preferred, is a long childhood spent in the company of fractious siblings. After several years of rainy afternoons, brothers and sisters develop a sure feel for the tactics of attrition and the niceties of strategy so necessary in first–rate quarrelling.
The only child, or the child of peaceful or repressed households, is likely to grow up failing to understand that quarrels, unlike arguments, are not about anything, least of all the pursuit of truth. The apparent subject of a quarrel is a mere pretext; the real business is the quarrel itself.
Essentially, adversaries in a quarrel are out to establish or rescue their dignity.
Hence the elementary principle: anything may be said. The unschooled, probably no less quarrelsome by inclination than anyone else, may spend an hour with knocking heart, sifting the consequences of calling this old acquaintance a lying fraud, Too late? With a cheerful wave the old acquaintance has left the room. Those who miss their first apprenticeship may care to enroll in the second, the bad marriage. This can be perilous for the neophyte; the mutual intimacy of spouses makes them at once more vulnerable and more dangerous in attack. Once sex is involved, the stakes are higher all round. And there is an unspoken rule that those who love, or have loved. One another are granted a license for unlimited beastliness such as is denied to mere sworn enemies. For all that, some of our most tenacious black belt quarrelers have come to it late in life and mastered every throw, from the Crushing Silence to the Gloating Apology, in less than ten years of marriage.
A quarrel may last years. Among brooding types with time on their hands like writers, half a lifetime is not uncommon. In its most refined form, a quarrel may consist of the participants not talking to each other. They will need to scheme laboriously to appear in public together to register their silence.
Brief, violent quarrels are also known as rows. In all cases the essential ingredient remains the same; the original cause must be forgotten as soon as possible. From here on, dignity, pride, self–esteem, honour are the crucial issues, which is why quarrelling, like jealousy, is an all–consuming business, virtually a profession. For, the quarreler’s very self–hood is on the line. To lose an argument is a brief disappointment, much like losing a game of tennis; but to be crushed in a quarrel…rather bite off your tongue and spread it at your opponent’s feet.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Computers and electronic communications are allowing many people to use their homes as offices. But offices will never disappear entirely. Instead, the office of the future may become like home.
AMERICAN managers who want to get more out of their white–collar workforce will be in for a shock if they seek advice from Frank Becker, a professor at Cornell University who studies the patterns of office work.
Mr. Becker is one of a group of academics and consultants trying to make companies more productive by linking new office technology to a better understanding of how employees work. The forecast of a decade ago that computers would increase office productivity, reduce white–collar payrolls and help the remaining staff to work better – have proved much too hopeful. Mr. Becker, who unfortunately calls himself an "organizational ecologist", is trying to find out why the huge sums of money spent on office automation have produced such disappointing results. He is leading a two–year study on offices called “Workscape 21”. Sponsored by Cornell, the study is financed by firms in America, Japan, Britain and Holland.
Even before completing the study, Mr. Becker has firm ideas about how the office of the future should look. Technology, better communications, rising inner–city land costs (once today's property bust is over) and the trials of commuting will, he predicts, prompt more workers to split time between a central office, a computer–equipped home office and perhaps a satellite office in a suburban business park.
Even those few workers based at the central office will be more mobile, moving between different work stations as their tasks change, taking their mobile telephones with them. This will cut the amount of wasted office space, says Mr. Becker. It will also improve communications between employees, by pushing them out of the tight and unchanging circle of people who sit nearby.
Mr. Becker predicts that the central office will become mainly a place where workers from satellite and home–based offices meet to discuss ideas and to reaffirm their loyalty to fellow employees and the company. This will require new thoughts about the layout of office buildings. Now, spaces for copying machines, coffee rooms, meetings and reception areas usually come second to the offices in which people spend most of the day working. Mr. Becker sees these common areas gradually becoming the heart of an office. He even believes that many central offices will come to resemble a hotel lobby or somebody's home – a disturbing thought, that, for people who find in the calm of the office a refuge from the rigors of family life.
Managers, says Mr. Becker, will also have to abandon their long–cherished notion that a productive employee is an employee that can be seen. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant. Technology and new patterns of office use will make companies judge people by what they do, not by where they spend their time.
That does not mean the end of the office, just its transformation into a social centre. Thomas Alien, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied communication patterns between people, in the admittedly artificial environment of research laboratories. His less–than–startling conclusion is that people talk to each other more when they work in close proximity. Workers on different floors might as well be in different buildings, so rarely do they see one another.
Because buildings are seldom designed with employee–to–employee contact in mind, co–workers may barely know someone a few yards away, even though they have related jobs.
To show how this can be changed, Mr. Alien has helped one pharmaceutical firm to establish an experimental office designed to get chemists and biologists to talk more to each other. A similar bunch of employees, serving as a control group, is occupying a more conventional building. The two groups will be compared for such things as the time they take to complete reports and the rate at which they find new chemical compounds.
New ideas about offices are catching on elsewhere. IBM's British division will soon have all 1,000 of its headquarters’ employees working in "non–territorial" offices – places where they have no desk to call their own. And in California TRW and GTE arc trying to help employees cope with traffic problems and work more efficiently by setting up satellite offices. Digital Equipment Corp's subsidiary in Finland has equipped offices with reclining chairs and scuffed sofas to make them more comfortable and conducive to informal conversations and the swapping of ideas. Companies such as Apple and General Electric are experimenting along similar lines.
Steelcase, a manufacturer of office furniture, is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts and designs. The company's research center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a $111 m building completed in 1989. It is designed around a series of office "neighborhoods" that put marketing, manufacturing and design people close to each other so that they can find it easier to discuss ideas and solve problems. Employees on different floors can see one another through glass, and easily go from floor to floor via escalators.
Top managers work in a cluster of offices that are wrapped around an atrium in the middle of the building, rather than occupying the usual suite of top–floor offices. They can see, and be seen by, the people they manage. Mr. Allen, who worked as a consultant to Steelcase and argued vigorously for placing the bosses' offices in the middle of the building, believes it will improve managers' chances of bumping into the people they lead. "Who knows," he says, "they might even talk to them."
Enriching as it is to be constantly under the gaze of your superiors, Steelcase employees are also rather keen on 14 "think–tanks" located on the sixth floor of the pyramid. Intended for intense, individual work, these small offices are equipped with a computer, but no telephone. Available on a first–come, first–served basis, these havens are rarely unoccupied. Sometimes even the most communicative employee just wants to be left alone.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Computers and electronic communications are allowing many people to use their homes as offices. But offices will never disappear entirely. Instead, the office of the future may become like home.
AMERICAN managers who want to get more out of their white–collar workforce will be in for a shock if they seek advice from Frank Becker, a professor at Cornell University who studies the patterns of office work.
Mr. Becker is one of a group of academics and consultants trying to make companies more productive by linking new office technology to a better understanding of how employees work. The forecast of a decade ago that computers would increase office productivity, reduce white–collar payrolls and help the remaining staff to work better – have proved much too hopeful. Mr. Becker, who unfortunately calls himself an "organizational ecologist", is trying to find out why the huge sums of money spent on office automation have produced such disappointing results. He is leading a two–year study on offices called “Workscape 21”. Sponsored by Cornell, the study is financed by firms in America, Japan, Britain and Holland.
Even before completing the study, Mr. Becker has firm ideas about how the office of the future should look. Technology, better communications, rising inner–city land costs (once today's property bust is over) and the trials of commuting will, he predicts, prompt more workers to split time between a central office, a computer–equipped home office and perhaps a satellite office in a suburban business park.
Even those few workers based at the central office will be more mobile, moving between different work stations as their tasks change, taking their mobile telephones with them. This will cut the amount of wasted office space, says Mr. Becker. It will also improve communications between employees, by pushing them out of the tight and unchanging circle of people who sit nearby.
Mr. Becker predicts that the central office will become mainly a place where workers from satellite and home–based offices meet to discuss ideas and to reaffirm their loyalty to fellow employees and the company. This will require new thoughts about the layout of office buildings. Now, spaces for copying machines, coffee rooms, meetings and reception areas usually come second to the offices in which people spend most of the day working. Mr. Becker sees these common areas gradually becoming the heart of an office. He even believes that many central offices will come to resemble a hotel lobby or somebody's home – a disturbing thought, that, for people who find in the calm of the office a refuge from the rigors of family life.
Managers, says Mr. Becker, will also have to abandon their long–cherished notion that a productive employee is an employee that can be seen. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant. Technology and new patterns of office use will make companies judge people by what they do, not by where they spend their time.
That does not mean the end of the office, just its transformation into a social centre. Thomas Alien, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied communication patterns between people, in the admittedly artificial environment of research laboratories. His less–than–startling conclusion is that people talk to each other more when they work in close proximity. Workers on different floors might as well be in different buildings, so rarely do they see one another.
Because buildings are seldom designed with employee–to–employee contact in mind, co–workers may barely know someone a few yards away, even though they have related jobs.
To show how this can be changed, Mr. Alien has helped one pharmaceutical firm to establish an experimental office designed to get chemists and biologists to talk more to each other. A similar bunch of employees, serving as a control group, is occupying a more conventional building. The two groups will be compared for such things as the time they take to complete reports and the rate at which they find new chemical compounds.
New ideas about offices are catching on elsewhere. IBM's British division will soon have all 1,000 of its headquarters’ employees working in "non–territorial" offices – places where they have no desk to call their own. And in California TRW and GTE arc trying to help employees cope with traffic problems and work more efficiently by setting up satellite offices. Digital Equipment Corp's subsidiary in Finland has equipped offices with reclining chairs and scuffed sofas to make them more comfortable and conducive to informal conversations and the swapping of ideas. Companies such as Apple and General Electric are experimenting along similar lines.
Steelcase, a manufacturer of office furniture, is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts and designs. The company's research center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a $111 m building completed in 1989. It is designed around a series of office "neighborhoods" that put marketing, manufacturing and design people close to each other so that they can find it easier to discuss ideas and solve problems. Employees on different floors can see one another through glass, and easily go from floor to floor via escalators.
Top managers work in a cluster of offices that are wrapped around an atrium in the middle of the building, rather than occupying the usual suite of top–floor offices. They can see, and be seen by, the people they manage. Mr. Allen, who worked as a consultant to Steelcase and argued vigorously for placing the bosses' offices in the middle of the building, believes it will improve managers' chances of bumping into the people they lead. "Who knows," he says, "they might even talk to them."
Enriching as it is to be constantly under the gaze of your superiors, Steelcase employees are also rather keen on 14 "think–tanks" located on the sixth floor of the pyramid. Intended for intense, individual work, these small offices are equipped with a computer, but no telephone. Available on a first–come, first–served basis, these havens are rarely unoccupied. Sometimes even the most communicative employee just wants to be left alone.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Computers and electronic communications are allowing many people to use their homes as offices. But offices will never disappear entirely. Instead, the office of the future may become like home.
AMERICAN managers who want to get more out of their white–collar workforce will be in for a shock if they seek advice from Frank Becker, a professor at Cornell University who studies the patterns of office work.
Mr. Becker is one of a group of academics and consultants trying to make companies more productive by linking new office technology to a better understanding of how employees work. The forecast of a decade ago that computers would increase office productivity, reduce white–collar payrolls and help the remaining staff to work better – have proved much too hopeful. Mr. Becker, who unfortunately calls himself an "organizational ecologist", is trying to find out why the huge sums of money spent on office automation have produced such disappointing results. He is leading a two–year study on offices called “Workscape 21”. Sponsored by Cornell, the study is financed by firms in America, Japan, Britain and Holland.
Even before completing the study, Mr. Becker has firm ideas about how the office of the future should look. Technology, better communications, rising inner–city land costs (once today's property bust is over) and the trials of commuting will, he predicts, prompt more workers to split time between a central office, a computer–equipped home office and perhaps a satellite office in a suburban business park.
Even those few workers based at the central office will be more mobile, moving between different work stations as their tasks change, taking their mobile telephones with them. This will cut the amount of wasted office space, says Mr. Becker. It will also improve communications between employees, by pushing them out of the tight and unchanging circle of people who sit nearby.
Mr. Becker predicts that the central office will become mainly a place where workers from satellite and home–based offices meet to discuss ideas and to reaffirm their loyalty to fellow employees and the company. This will require new thoughts about the layout of office buildings. Now, spaces for copying machines, coffee rooms, meetings and reception areas usually come second to the offices in which people spend most of the day working. Mr. Becker sees these common areas gradually becoming the heart of an office. He even believes that many central offices will come to resemble a hotel lobby or somebody's home – a disturbing thought, that, for people who find in the calm of the office a refuge from the rigors of family life.
Managers, says Mr. Becker, will also have to abandon their long–cherished notion that a productive employee is an employee that can be seen. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant. Technology and new patterns of office use will make companies judge people by what they do, not by where they spend their time.
That does not mean the end of the office, just its transformation into a social centre. Thomas Alien, a professor of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has studied communication patterns between people, in the admittedly artificial environment of research laboratories. His less–than–startling conclusion is that people talk to each other more when they work in close proximity. Workers on different floors might as well be in different buildings, so rarely do they see one another.
Because buildings are seldom designed with employee–to–employee contact in mind, co–workers may barely know someone a few yards away, even though they have related jobs.
To show how this can be changed, Mr. Alien has helped one pharmaceutical firm to establish an experimental office designed to get chemists and biologists to talk more to each other. A similar bunch of employees, serving as a control group, is occupying a more conventional building. The two groups will be compared for such things as the time they take to complete reports and the rate at which they find new chemical compounds.
New ideas about offices are catching on elsewhere. IBM's British division will soon have all 1,000 of its headquarters’ employees working in "non–territorial" offices – places where they have no desk to call their own. And in California TRW and GTE arc trying to help employees cope with traffic problems and work more efficiently by setting up satellite offices. Digital Equipment Corp's subsidiary in Finland has equipped offices with reclining chairs and scuffed sofas to make them more comfortable and conducive to informal conversations and the swapping of ideas. Companies such as Apple and General Electric are experimenting along similar lines.
Steelcase, a manufacturer of office furniture, is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts and designs. The company's research center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a $111 m building completed in 1989. It is designed around a series of office "neighborhoods" that put marketing, manufacturing and design people close to each other so that they can find it easier to discuss ideas and solve problems. Employees on different floors can see one another through glass, and easily go from floor to floor via escalators.
Top managers work in a cluster of offices that are wrapped around an atrium in the middle of the building, rather than occupying the usual suite of top–floor offices. They can see, and be seen by, the people they manage. Mr. Allen, who worked as a consultant to Steelcase and argued vigorously for placing the bosses' offices in the middle of the building, believes it will improve managers' chances of bumping into the people they lead. "Who knows," he says, "they might even talk to them."
Enriching as it is to be constantly under the gaze of your superiors, Steelcase employees are also rather keen on 14 "think–tanks" located on the sixth floor of the pyramid. Intended for intense, individual work, these small offices are equipped with a computer, but no telephone. Available on a first–come, first–served basis, these havens are rarely unoccupied. Sometimes even the most communicative employee just wants to be left alone.

According to the writer, quarrels between married couples may be

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Great emotional and intellectual resources are demanded in quarrels, stamina helps, as does a capacity for obsession. But no one is born a good quarreler; the craft must be learnt. There are two generally recognized apprenticeships. First, and universally preferred, is a long childhood spent in the company of fractious siblings. After several years of rainy afternoons, brothers and sisters develop a sure feel for the tactics of attrition and the niceties of strategy so necessary in first–rate quarrelling.
The only child, or the child of peaceful or repressed households, is likely to grow up failing to understand that quarrels, unlike arguments, are not about anything, least of all the pursuit of truth. The apparent subject of a quarrel is a mere pretext; the real business is the quarrel itself.
Essentially, adversaries in a quarrel are out to establish or rescue their dignity.
Hence the elementary principle: anything may be said. The unschooled, probably no less quarrelsome by inclination than anyone else, may spend an hour with knocking heart, sifting the consequences of calling this old acquaintance a lying fraud, Too late? With a cheerful wave the old acquaintance has left the room. Those who miss their first apprenticeship may care to enroll in the second, the bad marriage. This can be perilous for the neophyte; the mutual intimacy of spouses makes them at once more vulnerable and more dangerous in attack. Once sex is involved, the stakes are higher all round. And there is an unspoken rule that those who love, or have loved. One another are granted a license for unlimited beastliness such as is denied to mere sworn enemies. For all that, some of our most tenacious black belt quarrelers have come to it late in life and mastered every throw, from the Crushing Silence to the Gloating Apology, in less than ten years of marriage.
A quarrel may last years. Among brooding types with time on their hands like writers, half a lifetime is not uncommon. In its most refined form, a quarrel may consist of the participants not talking to each other. They will need to scheme laboriously to appear in public together to register their silence.
Brief, violent quarrels are also known as rows. In all cases the essential ingredient remains the same; the original cause must be forgotten as soon as possible. From here on, dignity, pride, self–esteem, honour are the crucial issues, which is why quarrelling, like jealousy, is an all–consuming business, virtually a profession. For, the quarreler’s very self–hood is on the line. To lose an argument is a brief disappointment, much like losing a game of tennis; but to be crushed in a quarrel…rather bite off your tongue and spread it at your opponent’s feet.

In the passage as a whole, the writer treats quarrelling as if it were

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Great emotional and intellectual resources are demanded in quarrels, stamina helps, as does a capacity for obsession. But no one is born a good quarreler; the craft must be learnt. There are two generally recognized apprenticeships. First, and universally preferred, is a long childhood spent in the company of fractious siblings. After several years of rainy afternoons, brothers and sisters develop a sure feel for the tactics of attrition and the niceties of strategy so necessary in first–rate quarrelling.
The only child, or the child of peaceful or repressed households, is likely to grow up failing to understand that quarrels, unlike arguments, are not about anything, least of all the pursuit of truth. The apparent subject of a quarrel is a mere pretext; the real business is the quarrel itself.
Essentially, adversaries in a quarrel are out to establish or rescue their dignity.
Hence the elementary principle: anything may be said. The unschooled, probably no less quarrelsome by inclination than anyone else, may spend an hour with knocking heart, sifting the consequences of calling this old acquaintance a lying fraud, Too late? With a cheerful wave the old acquaintance has left the room. Those who miss their first apprenticeship may care to enroll in the second, the bad marriage. This can be perilous for the neophyte; the mutual intimacy of spouses makes them at once more vulnerable and more dangerous in attack. Once sex is involved, the stakes are higher all round. And there is an unspoken rule that those who love, or have loved. One another are granted a license for unlimited beastliness such as is denied to mere sworn enemies. For all that, some of our most tenacious black belt quarrelers have come to it late in life and mastered every throw, from the Crushing Silence to the Gloating Apology, in less than ten years of marriage.
A quarrel may last years. Among brooding types with time on their hands like writers, half a lifetime is not uncommon. In its most refined form, a quarrel may consist of the participants not talking to each other. They will need to scheme laboriously to appear in public together to register their silence.
Brief, violent quarrels are also known as rows. In all cases the essential ingredient remains the same; the original cause must be forgotten as soon as possible. From here on, dignity, pride, self–esteem, honour are the crucial issues, which is why quarrelling, like jealousy, is an all–consuming business, virtually a profession. For, the quarreler’s very self–hood is on the line. To lose an argument is a brief disappointment, much like losing a game of tennis; but to be crushed in a quarrel…rather bite off your tongue and spread it at your opponent’s feet.

Some scientists believe that

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.


There are millions of stars in the sky. We see many of them in the night sky. But, we can see only one during the day – the sun. The sun is also a star like so many others in the sky. But, it is ‘our’ star. It is the head of and at the centre of the family we call “The solar system”. All the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun.  Till recently, we were told that there are nine planets in the solar system, Mercury being the nearest to the sun and Pluto the most distant; Jupiter being the largest and Pluto again being the smallest. Some astronomers believe there could be more. They say that Pluto is too small to be called a planet.  It is a dwarf planet, though still much bigger than ordinary asteroids. The planets move around the sun in a definite orbit. This is what prevents them from striking each other.

The passage is an introduction to the

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.


The word “continent” actually meant mainland in the past, when the Greeks and Romans ruled the western world. The common view is that a big mass of land that is bigger than a single country and separated from other big masses of land either by sea, mountains or deserts should be a continent. However, a continent is defined upon the needs of a person. Historians divide the world into continents in a different manner. Geography teachers see it differently. Geologists see it from their own viewpoint and people of different countries divide the world into continents to suit their own purposes. There is quite a bit of confusion in the world over the number of continents, their names and their areas. For example, in Europe, they still believe the world to be divided into five continents as represented in the five rings of the Olympic flag. However, Americans divide the Earth’s land mass into seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, for such division is the most reasonable and easiest for studying the world.

What does the passage inform us?

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.


There are millions of stars in the sky. We see many of them in the night sky. But, we can see only one during the day – the sun. The sun is also a star like so many others in the sky. But, it is ‘our’ star. It is the head of and at the centre of the family we call “The solar system”. All the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun.  Till recently, we were told that there are nine planets in the solar system, Mercury being the nearest to the sun and Pluto the most distant; Jupiter being the largest and Pluto again being the smallest. Some astronomers believe there could be more. They say that Pluto is too small to be called a planet.  It is a dwarf planet, though still much bigger than ordinary asteroids. The planets move around the sun in a definite orbit. This is what prevents them from striking each other.

The word “orbit” could most nearly mean

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.


There are millions of stars in the sky. We see many of them in the night sky. But, we can see only one during the day – the sun. The sun is also a star like so many others in the sky. But, it is ‘our’ star. It is the head of and at the centre of the family we call “The solar system”. All the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun.  Till recently, we were told that there are nine planets in the solar system, Mercury being the nearest to the sun and Pluto the most distant; Jupiter being the largest and Pluto again being the smallest. Some astronomers believe there could be more. They say that Pluto is too small to be called a planet.  It is a dwarf planet, though still much bigger than ordinary asteroids. The planets move around the sun in a definite orbit. This is what prevents them from striking each other.

The author wants to emphasise that

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows.


The word “continent” actually meant mainland in the past, when the Greeks and Romans ruled the western world. The common view is that a big mass of land that is bigger than a single country and separated from other big masses of land either by sea, mountains or deserts should be a continent. However, a continent is defined upon the needs of a person. Historians divide the world into continents in a different manner. Geography teachers see it differently. Geologists see it from their own viewpoint and people of different countries divide the world into continents to suit their own purposes. There is quite a bit of confusion in the world over the number of continents, their names and their areas. For example, in Europe, they still believe the world to be divided into five continents as represented in the five rings of the Olympic flag. However, Americans divide the Earth’s land mass into seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, for such division is the most reasonable and easiest for studying the world.