DirectingClass 12 Business Studies Part 1 NCERT Solutions
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Q1Long Answer Type
Discuss Maslow's Need Hierarchy theory of motivation.
Solution
Abraham Maslow's Need Hierarchy Theory is a fundamental theory of motivation based on human needs. Maslow proposed that within every human being, there exists a hierarchy of five needs, and people are motivated to satisfy these needs in a sequential order. The five levels of needs are:
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Basic Physiological Needs: These are the most basic needs for human survival and are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They include the need for food, water, shelter, sleep, and warmth. In an organisational context, an employee's basic salary helps to satisfy these needs.
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Safety/Security Needs: Once physiological needs are met, the need for safety and security becomes dominant. This includes security from physical and emotional harm, job security, stability of income, and financial reserves like pension plans.
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Affiliation/Belonging Needs: After safety needs are fulfilled, social needs emerge. These needs refer to the desire for affection, a sense of belongingness, acceptance by social groups, and friendship. Cordial relations with colleagues and peers in an organisation can satisfy these needs.
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Esteem Needs: These needs include factors such as self-respect, autonomy, status, recognition, and attention from others. In an organisation, job titles, praise, and recognition for good work help satisfy these needs.
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Self-Actualisation Needs: This is the highest level of need in the hierarchy. It refers to the drive to become what one is capable of becoming. It includes the need for personal growth, self-fulfillment, and the achievement of one's full potential. Opportunities for skill development and achieving challenging goals satisfy this need.
Assumptions of Maslow's Theory:
- People's behaviour is based on their needs, and satisfaction of these needs influences their behaviour.
- Needs are arranged in a hierarchical order, from basic to higher-level needs.
- A satisfied need no longer motivates a person; only the next higher-level need can motivate them.
- A person moves to the next higher level of the hierarchy only when the lower-level need is reasonably satisfied.
The theory helps managers understand that to motivate employees, they must first identify the need level of the employee and then provide incentives that can satisfy that specific level of need.
Q2Long Answer Type
What are the common barriers to effective communication? Suggest measures to overcome them.
Solution
Effective communication can be hindered by several barriers which may prevent, filter, or distort the message. These barriers can be grouped into four categories:
Common Barriers to Effective Communication:
- Semantic Barriers: These are related to the meaning of words and symbols. They include badly expressed messages, words with different meanings, faulty translations, unclarified assumptions, and the use of technical jargon.
- Psychological Barriers: These are emotional or mental factors that act as barriers. They include premature evaluation (judging a message before it is complete), lack of attention, loss of information during transmission through various levels (poor retention), and distrust between the sender and receiver.
- Organisational Barriers: These barriers are related to the organisation's structure, rules, and policies. They include restrictive organisational policies that do not support free communication, rigid rules and procedures, psychological distance created by status differences, complexity in the organisation structure with many managerial levels, and lack of proper organisational facilities for communication.
- Personal Barriers: These relate to the personal factors of both the sender and the receiver. For superiors, this can be fear of their authority being challenged or a lack of confidence in their subordinates. For subordinates, it can be unwillingness to communicate or a lack of proper incentives to do so.
Measures to Overcome Communication Barriers:
To improve communication effectiveness, managers can adopt the following measures:
- Clarify the ideas before communication: The sender should be absolutely clear about what they want to communicate.
- Communicate according to the needs of the receiver: The sender should adjust the message according to the education and understanding level of the receiver.
- Consult others before communicating: Involving others in developing a communication plan can help gain acceptance and cooperation.
- Be aware of language, tone, and content: The language should be understandable, and the tone should not offend the receiver. The message should be clear and concise.
- Convey things of help and value to listeners: The message should be relevant to the interests and needs of the receiver to evoke a positive response.
- Ensure proper feedback: The sender should encourage the receiver to ask questions and give feedback to ensure the message has been understood correctly.
- Follow up communications: Managers should follow up on instructions to see if they are being implemented and to address any problems.
- Be a good listener: Managers should be patient and attentive listeners, which can solve many problems and encourage subordinates to communicate freely.
Q3Long Answer Type
Explain different financial and non-financial incentives used to motivate employees of a company?
Solution
Incentives are measures used to motivate people to improve their performance. They can be broadly classified into financial and non-financial incentives.
Financial Incentives:
These incentives are in direct monetary form or are measurable in monetary terms. They are used to satisfy the physiological and security needs of employees. The common financial incentives are:
- Pay and Allowances: Salary is the basic monetary incentive. It includes basic pay, dearness allowance, and other allowances. Regular increments are also a part of it.
- Productivity Linked Wage Incentives: These plans link the payment of wages to the increase in productivity, either at the individual or group level.
- Bonus: An incentive offered over and above the salary to the employees, often based on profits or performance.
- Profit Sharing: This involves providing employees with a share in the organisation's profits, motivating them to improve performance and contribute to profitability.
- Co-partnership/Stock Option: Employees are offered company shares at a price lower than the market price. This creates a feeling of ownership and encourages them to contribute to the organisation's growth.
- Retirement Benefits: Benefits like provident fund, pension, and gratuity provide financial security to employees after retirement.
- Perquisites: These are fringe benefits offered in addition to salary, such as car allowance, housing, medical aid, and education for children.
Non-Financial Incentives:
These incentives focus on satisfying the psychological, social, and emotional needs of employees. The important non-financial incentives are:
- Status: This refers to the ranking of positions in the organisation. The authority, responsibility, and prestige of a job satisfy the esteem needs of an individual.
- Organisational Climate: A positive climate with characteristics like individual autonomy, reward orientation, and consideration for employees motivates them.
- Career Advancement Opportunity: Providing opportunities for skill development and promotion to higher-level jobs acts as a powerful motivator.
- Job Enrichment: Designing jobs with greater variety, requiring higher skills, and giving more autonomy makes the job itself a source of motivation.
- Employee Recognition Programmes: Acknowledging and appreciating the good work of employees through awards, certificates, or praise motivates them to perform better.
- Job Security: Providing stability of income and work reduces worry and allows employees to work with greater zeal.
- Employee Participation: Involving employees in decision-making on issues related to them fosters a sense of belonging and commitment.
- Employee Empowerment: Giving more autonomy and power to subordinates makes them feel that their jobs are important and motivates them to use their skills and talents effectively.
Q4Long Answer Type
In an organisation all the employees take things easy and are free to approach anyone for minor queries and problems. This has resulted in everyone taking to each other and thus resulting in inefficiency in the office. It has also resulted in loss of secrecy and confidential information being leaked out. What system do you think the manager should adopt to improve communication?
Solution
The current situation in the organisation is a result of an over-reliance on informal communication and a lack of a structured communication system. The 'free flow' network of communication is dominant, leading to inefficiency, rumors, and leakage of confidential information. To improve communication, the manager should adopt and enforce a system of Formal Communication.
This system involves establishing clear and official channels of communication that are designed in the organisation chart. The following steps should be taken:
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Establish Clear Lines of Authority and Communication: The manager should implement a clear organisational structure where every employee knows who their superior is and who their subordinates are. This will enforce the principles of 'Unity of Command' and 'Scalar Chain'.
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Implement Vertical Communication Channels:
- Downward Communication: For giving orders, instructions, and policy information, communication must flow from superiors to subordinates through official channels like memos, notices, and meetings.
- Upward Communication: For feedback, suggestions, and grievances, a formal channel must be established for subordinates to communicate with their superiors, such as through reports or suggestion boxes.
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Define Horizontal Communication: For inter-departmental coordination, a formal system should be in place for managers of the same level to communicate, for example, between the production and marketing managers.
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Use Appropriate Communication Networks: Instead of the chaotic 'free flow' network, the manager can implement more structured networks like:
- Single Chain Network: This is suitable for communication between a supervisor and their subordinates, ensuring that information flows through the proper hierarchical levels.
- Wheel Network: For certain tasks, a supervisor can act as the central hub through which all communication passes. This allows for control and prevents cross-talk among subordinates, which can be useful for maintaining secrecy.
By adopting a formal communication system, the manager can ensure that information flows in an orderly manner, reaches the right people, prevents the leakage of confidential information, reduces inefficiency, and establishes a more disciplined and professional work environment.
Q1Short Answer Type
What are semantic barriers of communication?
Solution
Semantic barriers of communication are concerned with problems and obstructions in the process of encoding and decoding of a message into words or impressions. These barriers arise from the different meanings that words and symbols can have. The main semantic barriers are:
- Badly expressed message: Using inadequate vocabulary, wrong words, or omitting necessary words, which leads to the intended meaning not being conveyed.
- Symbols with different meanings: A word can have several meanings, and if the receiver perceives a different meaning than what the sender intended, communication fails.
- Faulty translations: If a message is translated from one language to another by a person who is not proficient in both, the meaning can be distorted.
- Unclarified assumptions: When the sender communicates with certain assumptions that the receiver does not understand, it can lead to misinterpretation.
- Technical jargon: Specialists using technical terms with people who are not familiar with that field can cause a communication barrier.
- Body language and gesture decoding: If the sender's body language or gestures contradict the spoken words, the receiver may get a mixed or wrong message.
Q2Short Answer Type
Explain the process of motivation with the help of a diagram.
Solution
Motivation is a process based on human needs. It stimulates an individual to act in a certain way to achieve a goal. The process of motivation involves the following steps:
- Unsatisfied Need: The process begins with an unsatisfied need in an individual, which creates a psychological or physiological imbalance.
- Tension: This unsatisfied need creates tension, which stimulates the person's drives.
- Drives: These drives generate a search behaviour to find ways to satisfy the need.
- Search Behaviour: The individual engages in actions to find and acquire what will satisfy the need.
- Satisfied Need: If the search behaviour is successful, the need is satisfied.
- Reduction of Tension: The satisfaction of the need leads to a reduction of tension in the individual.
This process can be represented with the following diagram:
Unsatisfied Need → Tension → Drives → Search Behaviour → Satisfied Need → Reduction of Tension
Q3Short Answer Type
State the different networks of grapevine communications.
Solution
Grapevine or informal communication follows different types of networks. The four main networks are:
- Single Strand Network: In this network, information passes from one person to another in a sequence, like a chain.
- Gossip Network: Here, one person communicates with all other members of the network on a non-selective basis.
- Probability Network: In this network, an individual communicates randomly with other individuals. There is no specific pattern for the flow of information.
- Cluster Network: This is the most popular network in organisations. An individual communicates with only those people whom he or she trusts. These trusted individuals then may pass the information to other people they trust, forming a cluster.
Q4Short Answer Type
Explain any three principles of Directing.
Solution
Directing is a complex process, and certain guiding principles help in making it effective. Three important principles of directing are:
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Maximum Individual Contribution: This principle states that directing techniques should be designed to help every individual in the organisation contribute to their maximum potential towards achieving organisational objectives. It emphasizes using motivational techniques that bring out the untapped energies of employees for the efficiency of the organisation.
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Harmony of Objectives: Often, the personal objectives of employees (like high salary) and organisational objectives (like high productivity and profit) can seem to be in conflict. This principle suggests that good directing should provide harmony by convincing employees that their personal rewards and the organisation's efficiency are complementary. When the organisation prospers, the employees will also benefit.
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Unity of Command: This principle insists that a person in the organisation should receive instructions from only one superior. Receiving orders from more than one boss creates confusion, conflict, and disorder. Adherence to this principle ensures that direction is clear, responsibilities are fixed, and the subordinate knows whom to report to.
Q5Short Answer Type
In an organisation, one of the departmental manager is inflexible and once he takes a decision, he does not like to be contradicted. As a result, employees always feel they are under stress and they take least initiative and fear to express their opinions and problems before the manager. What is the problem in the way authority is being used by the manager?
Solution
The problem in the way authority is being used by the manager is that he is following an Autocratic or Authoritarian leadership style. This style is characterized by a leader who gives orders and expects subordinates to obey them without question. The manager is being dogmatic, meaning he is inflexible and does not wish to be contradicted. This leads to one-way communication where subordinates have no opportunity to participate in decision-making or express their opinions. The negative consequences are evident: employees feel stressed, lack initiative, and fear the manager, which hampers creativity, morale, and overall organisational effectiveness.
Q6Short Answer Type
A reputed hostel, GyanPradan provides medical aid and free education to children of its employees. Which incentive is being highlighted here? State its category and name any two more incentives of the same category.
Solution
The incentive being highlighted here is Perquisites or fringe benefits.
The category of this incentive is Financial Incentives, as these benefits are measurable in monetary terms and are provided over and above the salary.
Two more incentives from the same category (Financial Incentives) are:
- Pay and Allowances: This includes basic salary, dearness allowance, and other regular allowances which form the basic monetary incentive for an employee.
- Bonus: This is an incentive offered over and above the regular wages or salary, typically linked to performance or profits, to motivate employees.
Q1Very Short Answer Type
What is informal communication?
Solution
Informal communication is the communication that takes place without following the formal lines of communication established by the organisation. It is generally referred to as the 'grapevine' because it spreads throughout the organisation in all directions, disregarding the levels of authority. It arises from the social needs of employees to exchange their views.
Q2Very Short Answer Type
Which style of leadership does not believe in use of power unless it is absolutely essential?
Solution
The Laissez-faire or Free-rein style of leadership does not believe in the use of power unless it is absolutely essential. Under this style, the leader gives a high degree of independence to their followers to formulate their own objectives and ways to achieve them.
Q3Very Short Answer Type
Which element in the communication process involves converting the message into words, symbols, gestures etc.?
Solution
The element in the communication process that involves converting the message into communication symbols such as words, pictures, or gestures is called Encoding.
Q4Very Short Answer Type
The workers always try to show their inability when any new work is given to them. They are always unwilling to take up any kind of work. Due to sudden rise in demand a firm wants to meet excess orders. The supervisor is finding it difficult to cope up with the situation. State the element of directing that can help the supervisor in handling the problem.
Solution
The element of directing that can help the supervisor in handling this problem is Motivation. Motivation is the process of stimulating people to action to accomplish desired goals. The supervisor needs to understand the needs of the workers and use appropriate financial or non-financial incentives to induce them to perform willingly and contribute their best efforts to meet the excess orders.