Admission Tests GMAT - Graduate Management Admission Test (2022)

Soil salinization—the process by which soil acquires excess soluble salt, adversely affecting pasture or crop growth—is regarded as Australia's most serious environmental problem. Cope, whose 1958 investigation is considered the earliest survey of salt-affected areas in Victoria, hypothesized that surplus rainwater mobilized soluble salt stored in the permeable layer of soil, causing it to accumulate above an impermeable layer and then discharge downslope or onto a valley floor. In the late 1970s, however, Jenkin identified saline water underground as the main and immediate (though not ultimate) source of the salt, and hypothesized that the spread of salinity resulted from a rise in that groundwater. He attributed the rise to a decrease in coverage by water-absorbing trees and other vegetation at some ill-defined point in Australia's post-settlement history.

However, more-recent research suggests there was no rise in post-settlement groundwater levels. Furthermore, soil salinity probably antedated European settlement: early cartographic evidence indicates that some streams were saline when Europeans arrived. Dahlhaus suggests that salt accumulation resulted from marine incursions several million years ago, when parts of Victoria may have been submerged—as well as from transport of salt from the sea by wind and rain. Dahlhaus also notes that various minerals dissolved in groundwater by weathering may have produced salt.

Despite overall physiological bilateral symmetry, many species exhibit

lateralized biases, i.e., preferences for right- or left-oriented behavior. When

approaching prey, for example, some predator species favor their right eye; some

prey species respond more quickly when their left eye detects a predator. Similar

behavioral asymmetries occur in humans. Most notable is right- and lefthandedness; less notable is the tendency to turn right when entering a room.

Paul Farnsworth found that more successful students tended to choose seats near

the front, a little to the right. He argued that external factors such as teacher

location might have affected this lateral bias. But it is now known that processing

differences between the two brain hemispheres can also contribute to behavioral

asymmetries.

George Karev found that when presented with a movie theater seating

diagram, right-handed people were more likely than left-handed people to choose

a seat on the right, facing front. But he hypothesized that, since the right

hemisphere processes visuospatial and emotional information, the people who

chose right-side seats did so because that would put the screen in their left visual

field, optimizing information flow to the right hemisphere.

Although the right hemisphere is thought to be dominant in processing

emotion, some evidence suggests that the left hemisphere plays a role. The

valence model proposes that the left and right hemispheres process positive and

negative emotion respectively, while the approach-withdrawal model posits that

the left hemisphere processes emotion expressed in approach behavior and the

right hemisphere processes emotion expressed in withdrawal behavior.

Victoria Harms and colleagues suggested that since a paper seating plan was

used in the theater-seating studies by Karev and others, the exhibited preference

might be due simply to handedness: people choose the same side of the paper as

their favored hand. Consequently, the Harms research was designed to study

choices in an actual movie theater. Also, hoping to distinguish between various

explanations, they studied seating choices for comedies (presumed to contain

Positive emotional content), dramas (presumed to contain negative emotional

content), and documentaries (presumed to have balanced emotional content).

They found significant—though not universal—preference for seats on the right,

facing front, regardless of movie genre and of handedness.

Salespersons have employed two major sales tactics in order to influence customers to make relatively high-priced selections when presented with sequenced product lines (lines with graduated attributes and prices). The top-down tactic begins by presenting information on the highest-priced model and descends down the product line, explaining the sacrifices made with each step down. The way people use decision heuristics (rules of thumb) to simplify complex, information-rich decision tasks may explain the success of top-down selling. The "anchoring-and-adjustment" theory suggests that such mental shortcuts can systematically bias the decision outcome, as decision-makers start from an initial value or anchor point and adjust to yield a final decision.

The bottom-up sales tactic starts by presenting the lowest-priced model as the reference point and steps up to higher-priced models. Salespersons seek to communicate that the more expensive item is actually a better value. But nothing in the decision-heuristics literature supports the bottom-up strategy as an effective tactic, and to the extent that the anchoring-and-adjustment theory explains the effectiveness of top-down selling, it suggests that the bottom-up tactic should be ineffective. Furthermore, some psychologists suggest that customers may attribute less honesty and credibility to a salesperson who is trying to step them up the product line to a more expensive model; if true, this could limit the tactic's effectiveness.

Although a substantial body of evidence Indicates that flexible and participative work arrangements make possible significant performance advantages over more traditional centralized and hierarchical structures, the proportion of businesses that have so transformed themselves remains quite small. Why, then, do firms that purport to be rationally acting organizations appear to resist the very methods that would best equip them to achieve their stated goals?

One line of analysis points toward the phenomenon of structural inertia, suggesting that organizations are "imprinted" with the conditions under which they were born, tending thereafter to ding to long-established routines, production methods, and identities. A second approach fastens on resistance to change among middle managers, who are said to view new work practices as threats to their traditional status and authority. A third approach suggests that because firms have tended to adopt innovations singly, rather than in clusters, the firms often fail to achieve far-reaching organization change.

Although each of these perspectives contains a partial truth, each one is limited. Analysis using the concept of structural inertia tends to emphasize the conservative aspects of organizational culture and to neglect inside factors as sources of change. While theories of managerial resistance have stressed the importance of within-firm political processes, they often endow upper levels of management with an omniscience and openness to egalitarian practices that upper-level managers do not possess. Finally, the last approach often views new practices as if they exist in a vacuum—as if they are unmediated by the manner in which they are introduced.