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SECTION TEST - ACADEMIC READING
(Time: 60 minutes)

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Passage 1

GROUCHO MARX & ARTHUR SHEEKMAN

In a show-business career that spanned over seventy years, Groucho Marx successfully conquered every entertainment medium, becoming a star of the vaudeville stage, Broadway, motion pictures, radio and television. But, as the author of seven books, a play, two film screenplays and over one hundred magazine articles and essays, Groucho quietly conquered another medium, one in which he was as proud to work as any of the others. His writing is often overlooked in studies of his career, perhaps due to the quantity and variety of his other work.

Throughout his literary career, Groucho was dogged by the incorrect and unfair assumption by many critics and even by his biographer that he used a ghost writer. Most Hollywood celebrities who wrote books had professional writers do the actual work.The fact that Groucho publicly stated on many occasions that he abhorred ghost writers is clouded by his relationship with Arthur Sheekman. Friends for many years, Groucho and Sheekman had an unusual literary relationship. They worked in collaboration and each offered the other editorial help. For a brief time in the early 1940s, Groucho fronted for Sheekman, who was having trouble selling his work. By thus lending his name to another writer’s work, Groucho subjected all of his literary endeavors to suspicion from critics who simply refused to believe that an entertainer could write.

That some of Sheekman’s magazine pieces got into print under Groucho’s byline becomes apparent from reading the unedited correspondence between the two of them. The letters indicate that Groucho’s essays from this period fall into three categories: first, pieces written by Groucho with no input from Sheekman at all. In a July I, 1940, letter to Sheekman, Groucho asked, ‘Did you see that little piece I wrote for Reader's Digest?' On March 17, 1941, he wrote, ‘My drool is coming out in next week’s issue of This Week so cancel your subscription now.’ Clearly Sheekman could not have had anything to do with a piece that he was told to look for.

The second and probably largest category of Groucho’s essays of this period consists of those written by Groucho and sent to Sheekman for editorial assistance. On July 20, 1940, Groucho wrote: ‘I’m enclosing a copy of the piece I wrote. Probably another page or so is needed to complete it, but our starting date [for filming Go West] came and I just haven’t had time to finish it. Let me know what you think of it and be honest because any other kind of opinion would be of no value to me. I won’t attempt to influence you by telling you the reactions I’ve already had, so for the love of God tell me the truth.’ Shortly thereafter, on October 10, Groucho wrote: ‘I received your suggestions on my piece - I’m glad you liked it, if you did - you’re probably right about the beginning. I’ll do it over again.’ By the time Groucho wrote to Sheekman on July 25, 1942, it appears that some sort of financial arrangement had been made regarding Sheekman’s suggestions. On that date Groucho also wrote: ‘I’m writing an unfunny piece on insomnia and I’ll send it in a week or so, I hope, for you to read - I’d like your opinion, proofread — correcting all the glaring illiteracies and, otherwise, do a fine polishing job.'

The remainder of Groucho’s essays from this period comprise the third category, Sheekman compositions with varying degrees of input from Groucho. The level of Groucho’s contributions to the articles in the third category ranges from actually suggesting the topic and drawing up an outline to simply rewriting a few paragraphs for the purpose of injecting his own style into the piece. In a July 10, 1940, letter Groucho wrote: 'I think you ought to try another political piece - a campaign thing — for This Week or some other magazine. This will be an extremely hot topic for the next few months and I think you should take advantage of it. If you’ll write to me, I’ll try to jot down a few items that you could complain about.’ Presumably, the chain of events would continue with Sheekman sending an essay to Groucho for his approval and whatever rewrites were needed. On May 29, 1940, Groucho wrote, ‘Received your piece and looked it over.’ In these letters to Sheekman, Groucho always referred to a piece as either ‘my piece’ or ‘your piece’. The letter continued, ‘I thought the piece was good ... and I’ll send it to Bye and see if he can sell it ... I’ll just rewrite a couple of paragraphs in your piece - not that I can improve them, but perhaps they'll sound a little more like me.’ Groucho was concerned enough about this arrangement to take the care to at least make the piece somewhat his own.

Groucho really had no need for this entire enterprise. He gave the money to Sheekman and had no trouble getting his own work published. The principal reason for him submitting Sheekman’s work to magazines as his own was that it made Sheekman’s material easily marketable based on Groucho’s celebrity. Sheekman couldn’t have been altogether happy with the arrangement, but the reality was that he was periodically unemployed and the use of Groucho’s name brought in occasional paychecks. So it is not quite fair to call Sheekman Groucho’s ghost writer. A more apt description of their literary relationship at this time is that Groucho occasionally fronted for Sheekman and offered him the services of his literary agent, while each offered the other editorial advice. The reasons for some of their collaborative efforts not being credited as such remain unexplained, but Groucho was never shy about crediting his collaborators, and in every other case he did so.

Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Groucho’s essays in the early 1940s
Category 1	Category 2	Category 3
Sheekman had (1)………	Sheekman provided (2)………	Mostly (3)……… Groucho added (4)………

his own style editorial assistance Sheekman compositions no input

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

Passage 2

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES UNDER ADVERSE CONDITIONS

THE CHALLENGE

It is a great deal easier to motivate employees in a growing organisation than a declining one. When organisations are expanding and adding personnel, promotional opportunities, pay rises, and the excitement of being associated with a dynamic organization create feelings of optimism. Management is able to use the growth to entice and encourage employees. When an organisation is shrinking, the best and most mobile workers are prone to leave voluntarily. Unfortunately, they are the ones the organisation can least afford to lose - those with the highest skills and experience. The minor employees remain because their job options are limited.

Morale also suffers during decline. People fear they may be the next to be made redundant. Productivity often suffers, as employees spend their time sharing rumours and providing one another with moral support rather than focusing on their jobs. For those whose job are secure, pay increases are rarely possible. Pay cuts, unheard of during times of growth, may even be imposed, the ways of meeting this challenge can be broadly divided into six Key Points, which are outlined below.

KEY POINT ONE

There is an abundance of evidence to support the motivational benefits that result from carefully matching people to jobs. For example, if the job is running a small business or an autonomous unit within a larger business, high achievers should be sought. However, if the job to be filled is a managerial post in a large bureaucratic organisation, a candidate who has a high need for power and a low need for affiliation should be selected. Accordingly, high achievers should not be put into jobs that are inconsistent with their needs. High achievers will do best when the job provides moderately challenging goals and where there is independence and feedback. However, it should be remembered that not everybody is motivated by jobs that are high in independence, variety and responsibility.

KEY POINT TWO

The literature on goal-setting theory suggests that managers should ensure that all employees have specific goals and receive comments on how well they are doing in those goals. For those with high achievement needs, typically a minority in any organization, the existence of external goals is less important because high achievers are already internally motivated. The next factor to be determined is whether the goals should be assigned by a manager or collectively set in conjunction with the employees. The answer to that depends on perceptions of goal acceptance and the organisation’s culture. If resistance to goals is expected, the use of participation in goal-setting should increase acceptance. If participation is inconsistent with the culture, however, goals should be assigned. If participation and the culture are incongruous, employees are likely to perceive the participation process as manipulative and be negatively affected by it.

KEY POINT THREE

Regardless of whether goals are achievable or well within management's perceptions of the employee's ability, if employees see them as unachievable they will reduce their effort. Managers must be sure, therefore, that employees feel confident that their efforts can lead to performance goals. For managers, this means that employees must have the capability of doing the job and must regard the appraisal process as valid.

KEY POINT FOUR

Since employees have different needs, what acts as a reinforcement for one may not for another. Managers could use their knowledge of each employee to personalise the rewards over which they have control. Some of the more obvious rewards that managers allocate include pay, promotions, autonomy, job scope and depth, and the opportunity to participate in goal-setting and decision-making.

KEY POINT FIVE

Managers need to make rewards contingent on performance. To reward factors other than performance will only reinforce those other factors. Key rewards such as pay increases and promotions or advancements should be allocated for the attainment of the employee's specific goals. Consistent with maximising the impact of rewards, managers should look for ways to increase their visibility. Eliminating the secrecy surrounding pay by openly communicating everyone's remuneration, publicising performance bonuses and allocating annual salary increases in a lump sum rather than spreading them out over an entire year are examples of actions that will make rewards more visible and potentially more motivating.

KEY POINT SIX

The way rewards are distributed should be transparent so that employees perceive that rewards or outcomes are equitable and equal to the inputs given. On a simplistic level, experience, abilities, effort and other obvious inputs should explain differences in pay, responsibility and other obvious outcomes. The problem, however, is complicated by the existence of dozens of inputs and outcomes and by the fact that employee groups place different degrees of importance on them. For instance, a study comparing clerical and production workers identified nearly twenty inputs and outcomes. The clerical workers considered factors such as quality of work performed and job knowledge near the top of their list, but these were at the bottom of the production workers' list. Similarly, production workers thought that the most important inputs were intelligence and personal involvement task accomplishment, two factors that were quite low in the importance ratings of the clerks. There were also important, though less dramatic, differences on the outcome side. For example, production workers rated advancement very highly, whereas clerical workers rated advancement in the lower third of their list. Such findings suggest that one person's equity is another's inequity, so an ideal should probably weigh different inputs and outcomes according to employee group.

Passage 3

Dummy pills

There is an ongoing debate about the merits and the ethics of using placebos, sometimes called ‘sugar pills’. The ‘placebo effect’ is well documented though not completely understood. It refers to the apparent benefits, both psychological and physiological, of taking a medication or receiving a treatment that you expect will improve your health, when in fact the tablet contains no active ingredients and the treatment has never been proven. Any benefit that arises from a placebo originates solely in the mind of the person taking it. The therapeutic effect can be either real and measurable or perceived and imagined.

The placebo effect is a headache for drug manufactures. ‘Guinea pig’ patients, that is to say, those who volunteer for a new treatment, may show positive health gains from the placebo effect that masks the response to the treatment. This has led to the introduction of doubleblind trials – experiments where neither the patient nor the healthcare professional observing the patient knows whether a placebo has been used or not. So, for example, in a ‘randomized control trial’ (RCT), patients are selected at random and half the patients are given the new medication and half are given a placebo tablet that looks just the same. The observer is also ‘blind’ to the treatment to avoid bias. If the observer knows which patients are receiving the ‘real’ treatment they may be tempted to look harder for greater health improvements in these people in comparison with those on the placebos.

Whilst the case for placebos in drug trials appears to be justified, there are ethical issues to consider when using placebos. In particular, the need to discontinue placebos in clinical trials in favour of ‘real’ medication that is found to work, and whether a placebo should ever be prescribed in place of a real treatment without the patient ever knowing. In the first circumstance, it would be unethical to deny patients a new and effective treatment in a clinical trial and also unethical to stop patients from taking their existing tablets so that they can enter a trial. These two ethical perspectives are easy to understand. What is perhaps less clear is the distinction between a placebo that may have therapeutic value and a ‘quack cure’ which makes claims without any supporting evidence.

Quackery was at its height at the end of the nineteenth century, when socalled men of medicine peddled fake remedies claiming that all manner of diseases and afflictions could be cured. The modern equivalent of these quack cures are ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM) which are unable to substantiate the claims they make. There are dozens of these treaments, though the bestknown are perhaps acupuncture, homeopathy, osteopathy and reflexology. There is anecdotal evidence from patients that these treatments are effective but no scientific basis to support the evidence. Whilst recipients of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) can find the treatment to be therapeutic, it is not possible to distinguish these benefits from the placebo effect. Consequently it is important not to turn to alternative therapies too early but to adhere to modern scientific treatments. Complementary therapies are by definition intended to be used alongside traditional medicine as an adjunct treatment to obtain, at the very least, a placebo effect. With either complementary or alternative therapies the patient may notice an improvement in their health and link it with the therapy, when in fact it is the psychological benefit derived from a bit of pampering in a relaxing environment that has led to feelings of improvement, or it could be nature taking its course.

Patients enter into a clinical trial in the full knowledge that they have a 50/50 chance of receiving the new drug or the placebo. An ethical dilemma arises when a placebo is considered as a treatment in its own right; for example, in patients whose problems appear to be ‘all in the mind’. Whilst a placebo is by definition harmless and the ‘placebo effect’ is normally therapeutic, the practice is ethically dubious because the patient is being deceived into believing that the treatment is authentic. The person prescribing the placebo may hold the view that the treatment can be justified as long as it leads to an improvement in the patient’s health. However, benevolent efforts of this type are based on a deception that could, if it came to light, jeopardize the relationship between the physician and the patient. It is a small step between prescribing a placebo and believing that the physician always knows best, thereby denying patients the right to judge for themselves what is best for their own bodies.

Whilst it is entirely proper for healthcare professionals to act at all times in patients’ best interests, honesty is usually the best policy where medical treatments are concerned, in which case dummy pills have no place in modern medicine outside of clinical trials. On the other hand, complementary medicine, whilst lacking scientific foundations, should not be considered unethical if it is able to demonstrate therapeutic benefits, even if only a placebo effect, as long as patients are not given false hopes nor hold unrealistic expectations, and are aware that the treatment remains unproven.

Complete the summary using the list of words below.

genuine	deception	belief
questions	correct	harm
improve	dilemma	story
choices	ethical

choices dilemma harm genuine

Patients in a clinical trial are fully aware that they have only a 50% chance of receiving the new drug. Even so, prescribing a placebo as a treatment presents the physician with a moral . Even if the treatment works, the patient has been tricked into believing that the placebo was and if this were found out it could the physician–patient relationship. Furthermore, patients should not be denied the right to make about their own treatment.

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