GMAT Admission Tests Graduate Management Admission Test (2022) Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Managerial work is undergoing enormous and rapid change. With little precedent to guide them, managers are coping with the fading away of hierarchy and the blurring of clear distinctions of title, task, department, even corporation. Traditional sources of power are being eroded as levels of complexity and interdependence increase.

Competitive pressures from recent business downturns are forcing corporations to adopt flexible strategies and structures, including reductions In management staff and increased use of performance-based (rather than longevity-based) rewards. In a more profound change, in a growing number of companies horizontal ties between peers are replacing vertical ties as channels of activity and communication. Companies are asking departmental staff to play a more strategic role, with greater cross-departmental collaboration. Some organizations are forming strategic alliances with customers and outside suppliers that bring external relationships inside, where they can influence company policy.

Fundamentally, the new managerial work involves new ways of obtaining and using power. Position, title, and authority are no longer adequate tools when managers have to work cooperatively with other departments and even other companies. The ability of managers to get things done depends more on the number of networks in which they are included than on their rank in a hierarchy. In the past, formal structures and the emphasis on rank were more limiting. For example, access to information and the ability to get informal backing were often confined to the few officially sanctioned contact points between departments or between the company and Its suppliers or customers. Today, official barriers between departments and between companies are disappearing while Informal networks grow in importance. The new corporation has many more channels for action, strategic pathways that ignore the chain of command.

These strategic pathways also serve to diffuse power. As the number of ways to combine resources Increases, the ability to command diminishes. Alternative paths of communication and resource access erode the authority of those in the nominal chain of command. In other words, greater speed and flexibility undermine hierarchy. As more and more of the strategic action takes place in these informal networks, the Jobs that focus inward on particular departments decline In power.

Organizations that produce similar goods tend to concentrate in the same geographic area (geographic concentration of production). Economic explanations of such industrial agglomeration explicitly emphasize better performance, and implicitly emphasize lower failure rates, as the key processes contributing to this geographic concentration. Sometimes Industries benefit economically from situating themselves in particular locations that offer intrinsic advantages such as access to scarce raw materials or proximity to consumers. In other cases, regardless of the particular location, the colocation of structurally equivalent organizations—those that operate in the same markets—may itself yield advantages such as common labor markets and knowledge spillovers.

Sorenson and Audia point out that these explanations Ignore the fact that structurally equivalent organizations also compete with one another for vital resources, and colocation would be expected to increase such competition. Organizational ecology studies support this expectation by showing that organizations apparently compete more intensely within local population boundaries.

Sorenson and Audia propose instead that what maintains geographic concentration is entrepreneurial opportunity, which leads to higher founding rates. Dense local concentrations of structurally equivalent organizations increase the pool of potential entrepreneurs in a region. Beginning entrepreneurs need exposure to existing organizations in the industry to acquire knowledge of the business, ties to scarce resources, and self-confidence. The existing geographic concentration of production constrains access to these resources, so that new founding’s tend to reinforce geographic concentration.

Consider a mirage on a hot toad: when light rays hit the hot air just above the surface, they bend. Although light moves through a vacuum at a certain constant speed, it moves more slowly through any transparent medium, such as water or gas. Light travels faster in the thin air near the road than it does in the colder, denser air above, and the difference in speed makes it shift direction as it crosses the boundary between the two. Rays once headed downwards from the sky are redirected to your eye, hiding part of the road with a shimmering image.

A research team has constructed an apparatus to cloak an object from electromagnetic radiation (EMR)—in this case, microwaves—making the object "invisible" to microwave-based detection devices, somewhat as a mirage on a hot road makes the road invisible. The apparatus bends incoming microwaves around the object, using a class of recently created metamaterials—materials that gain certain desired properties directly from their engineered structures rather than from their composition. These metamaterials possess the ability, not found in nature, to bend microwaves at extreme angles. The metamaterial in this case—thin, rigid sheets of fiberglass insulator stamped with conducting loops, coils, and tiny rectangles—was designed to control the movement of incoming EMR.

The following is based on an article published in 2012.

Most linguists believe proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all Indo-European

languages, was the language of chariot-driving pastoralists who spread through

Eurasia from steppes north of the Black Sea about 4,000 years ago. But a

competing theory is that proto-Indo-European was spoken by farmers in Anatolia

(Asia Minor) about 9,000 years ago, and spread from there along with agriculture.

To evaluate these hypotheses, researchers statistically compared IndoEuropean languages' vocabularies. Languages with more similar vocabularies are

probably more closely related, sharing more recent common ancestors.

Combining the vocabulary statistics with the known dates when certain languages

split, and with their known geographical ranges, a computer calculated the most

likely relationships among all Indo-European languages and concluded that protoIndo-European probably originated in Anatolia 9,000 years ago.

Disputing this conclusion, skeptics argue that most Indo-European languages

are similar in their words pertaining to chariots and wagons, suggesting protoIndo-European split into daughter languages only after chariots and wagons were

invented. No archaeological evidence indicates that chariots and wagons existed

before 5,500 years ago. Furthermore, proto-Indo-European had words for "horse"

and "bee" and lent many words to proto-Uralic, the mother language of Finnish

and Hungarian. The steppes north of the Black Sea were far closer than Anatolia

to areas where proto-Uralic was spoken, and had more abundant wild horses and

bees.

Previously unknown extrasolar planets-planets outside our solar system— probably await discovery In archival images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. A new technique allows astronomers to model the amount and distribution of scattered light produced by young stars suspected of spawning planets and remove that light from images of those stars. Once the glare of the parent stars' light is removed, planets may show up In Images already taken by Hubble's infrared cameras, since heat emitted by planets produces telltale wavelengths of infrared light.

In 2008, astronomers using powerful Earth-based telescopes were able to detect three planets orbiting the star HR 8799 that were not previously detected by astronomers who examined infrared Hubble images of the star in 1998. David Lafrentere—a member of the team of astronomers who detected the planets in 2006 —then applied the new technique to those Hubble images and managed to uncover the outermost of the three planets. The others, tying closer to the star, still could not be distinguished against the background of the star's light.

Lafrenifre's work has helped reaffirm the importance of maintaining long-term archives, and—because Hubble's infrared cameras record some wavelengths of light that cannot penetrate through the atmosphere to reach Earth's surface-revealed new information about the outermost of HR 8799's planets.

Manufacturers and retailers tend to look askance at gray markets, where products are sold at cut-rate prices outside their authorized distribution channels. Manufacturers fear that gray markets will undercut margins and tarnish brand names. Retailers fear that they will siphon away customers and erode prices.

A new study indicates, however, that gray marketing actually benefits manufacturers and retailers in markets that meet two criteria: first, sharp differences exist in consumers' price sensitivity; second, large numbers of consumers are price-insensitive. In such markets, the low prices of the gray market will attract the most price-sensitive customers. The authonzed channels will then compete only for the remaining customers—those who are insensitive to price but sensitive to service.

When that happens, the structure of competition and the economics of the market shift. The authorized retailers, freed from having to cater to the bargain hunters, can raise their prices and focus on service. If the concentration of price-insensitive shoppers is high enough, the resulting increase in prices will more than offset the loss of sales to the bargain hunters. The margins and profits of the authorized retailers will increase, and manufacturers will, as a result, be able to boost their wholesale prices.

What makes a rhinoceros look like a rhinoceros, or a petunia like a petunia? Understanding the basis of the generation of the forms, patterns, or shapes of complex organisms is a principal subject of biologist Gerald Edelman's stimulating book Topobiology, which explores the links among the development, evolution, form, and function of organisms.

In older scientific language, one could say that Edelman has brought a new dimension to morphology, the study of the form and shape of animate and plants, and to histology, the study of the minute structure of tissues. The major thrust of his book te what he calls a morphoregulatory hypothesis, which can be described as the outline of a molecular basis for the formation of pattern, involving three types of genes. In the morphoregulatory sequence, morphoregulatory genes control the production of molecules that cause the formation of clusters of cells. When the cell dusters begin to communicate, they activate another type (selector genes) that then select and switch on a third type of gene (historegulatory genes).

In the organisms they have studied, Edelman and his colleagues have found cell adhesion molecules (resulting from morphoregulatory gene action) that are attached to the surface of different cells and link them in clusters. These molecules can appear at different times in the development of a multicellular system, and at various specific sites on the cells. Furthermore, their chemical structure can vary. This tremendous variation allows a great flexibility in the kinds of linkages the molecules effect.

A second class of adhesion molecules plays a comparable role In attaching cells to the developing scaffolding of filaments that lie outside cells. Also of particular interest to researchers are what are called cell Junction molecules, composed of clusters of proteins providing small channels from the inside of one cell to the Inside of another. These three types of molecules facilitate a kind of conversation among eels that determines the course of development of organisms. It has been possible to demonstrate how Important these molecules are by treating tissues with agents that block their functions, thus effectively and drastically changing the organism's development.