Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1 to 10.

        Once administrative discretion is encoded in software, oversight morphs into what workers experience as the invisible supervisor: scores, prompts, and nudges orchestrating pace and priorities. Hiring funnels are pre-triaged, scheduling is optimized, and productivity dashboards adjudicate attention. [I] Proponents extol scalability and cost efficiency; detractors warn about opacity and mechanistic evaluations that occlude context. In either case, algorithmic management reframes managerial craft as data-intensive coordination, delegating routine judgments while standardizing procedures that previously relied on tacit knowledge and situational feel.

        At the shop-floor edge and in the gig economy, telemetry creates a panoptic vantage: routes logged, keystrokes sampled, deviations flagged in real time. [II] Platforms like ride-hailing or e-commerce warehouses exemplify how metrics orchestrate allocation, incentives, and even termination paperwork. This apparatus can amplify bias when training data embed inequities, and it can unsettle power dynamics by converting managerial discretion into automated triggers. Hence, regulators and standards bodies urge auditable models, meaningful explanation rights, and channels for contesting algorithmic determinations.

        Managers are not rendered obsolete; rather, their roles tilt toward sense-making, exception handling, and ethical arbitration. When metric targets dictate cadence, the space for human discretion narrows, unless organizations deliberately scaffold transparency, reversible decisions, and appeals. [III] New competencies surface: learning to interrogate dashboards instead of gut feelings; communicating limits and trade-offs; and convening cross-functional dialogue about fairness. Done well, augmentation elevates craft by letting humans focus on ambiguity and care; done poorly, it degrades morale and fuels quiet resistance.

        Pragmatic implementation starts small: co-design with frontline staff, pilot under watchful review, and run retrospective audits to recalibrate thresholds. [IV] Governance should specify accountability for harms, data minimization, and sunset clauses; moreover, hybrid oversight  –  a human-in-the-loop with authority to override  –  sustains legitimacy. Over time, institutions that balance efficiency with dignity tend to outperform, because trusted systems elicit candid feedback, richer data, and better adaptation. The lesson is simple: speed matters, but stewardship sustains durability.

(Adapted from Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, Mareike Möhlmann, and Min Kyung Lee, “Algorithmic Management: The Role of AI in Managing Workforces,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 2023)

Question 1. According to paragraph 1, ______ orchestrate pace and priorities in algorithmic workflows?
A. randomized schedules ensuring equitable breaks and sufficient rest periods for everyone

B. managers walking the floor and adjusting tasks through conversation alone

C. scores, prompts, and nudges from the invisible supervisor control architecture

D. external auditors continuously monitoring every keystroke without managerial involvement

Question 2. The word panoptic in paragraph 2 mostly means ______.

A. excessively watchful                         B. broadly comprehensive                        

C. cautiously balanced                        D. mildly decorative

Question 3. Which of the following best summarises paragraph 2?

A. Telemetry metrics expand oversight, shift power, risk bias, and trigger demands for auditability, explanations, and avenues to contest automated decisions.

B. Warehouses and ride services increase productivity without ethical concerns, since machine terminations reliably remove bias from staffing decisions everywhere.

C. Managers now ignore data because regulations strictly prohibit telemetry across sectors, forcing organizations to rely solely on human judgment and manual reporting.

D. Bias emerges only during hiring, not in productivity tracking, so panoptic systems are broadly unproblematic beyond recruitment screening contexts.

Question 4. What managerial capabilities become more salient as algorithms handle routine judgments?
A. Designing office interiors and planning corporate parties during peak seasons for morale

B. Performing manual data entry and hand-calculating payroll taxes every afternoon for everyone, monthly
C. Writing custom machine learning code to replace all existing platforms from scratch, daily

D. Interpreting dashboards, mediating exceptions, and articulating ethical trade-offs across teams, consistently

Question 5. What do detractors in paragraph 1 warn about?

B. opacity and mechanistic, context-blind evaluations

A. excessive reliance on human intuition

C. abundant managerial time and empathy

D. perpetual labor shortages and union power

Question 6. The phrase invisible supervisor in paragraph 1 refers to ______.

A. auditors                B. line managers                C. algorithms                        D. sensors

Question 7. Which of the following best paraphrases the underlined sentence in paragraph 3?

When metric targets dictate cadence, the space for human discretion narrows, unless organizations deliberately scaffold transparency, reversible decisions, and appeals.

A. When dashboard-driven routines accelerate workflow tempo, supervisory discretion widens automatically because governance structures inevitably attenuate transparency and undermine reversible determinations’ utility.

B. Whenever executive leadership disregards quantitative benchmarks entirely, supervisory discretion expands dramatically because organizations already automated transparency features and eliminated appeal requirements.

C. As targets transition to aspirational guidance, discretionary latitude increases provided companies discourage transparency, restrict reversibility pathways, and close appeal channels preserving velocity.

D. If quantitative thresholds govern operational pacing, supervisory judgment becomes constrained absent deliberate investments in explicable architectures, revocable determinations, and formal contestation mechanisms.

Question 8. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A. Regulatory oversight will immediately remove bias from all algorithmic decisions, making participatory design unnecessary and rendering human-in-the-loop governance an expensive and redundant ceremonial formality entirely.

B. Organizations that embed contestability and human override will likely gather richer feedback, enabling continuous recalibration and yielding more resilient performance advantages over purely efficiency-obsessed rivals.

C. Metrics inherently motivate workers to collaborate openly, regardless of transparency, reversibility, or appeal rights, because quantification alone guarantees dignity and long-run trust throughout organizations universally.

D. Firms that start with large, untested deployments will generate better data faster, since pilots and audits inevitably slow innovation without improving any outcomes worth tracking.

Question 9. Where in the passage does the following sentence best fit?

This shift does not eliminate management; it redistributes judgment toward coordination and escalation.

A. [I]                        B. [II]                        C. [III]                                D. [IV]

Question 10. Which of the following best summarises the passage?

A. Efficiency is incompatible with workforce well-being; therefore organizations should avoid algorithmic systems and retain exclusively manual supervisory practices.

B. Digital oversight replaces managers entirely, proving that human discretion is unnecessary once dashboards automate every routine decision across complex workplaces.

C. Algorithms can scale management yet risk opacity and bias; thoughtful governance and new competencies preserve dignity while sustaining performance over time.

D. Regulation alone can guarantee fairness, allowing companies to deploy large-scale automation without building appeals, transparency, or human override capabilities.