How do rituals influence business practices in modern Japan?
2024
How do rituals influence business practices in modern Japan?
Answer: B. Manners and processes are more important than the final outcome — Concept — how a detail question about a passage is settled A passage-based question is answered from the passage alone, never from outside knowledge or from…
- A.
Results are prioritized over the process
- B.
Manners and processes are more important than the final outcome
- C.
Rituals are not significant in Japanese culture
- D.
Business processes are goal oriented
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept — how a detail question about a passage is settled
A passage-based question is answered from the passage alone, never from outside knowledge or from what merely sounds plausible about the subject. When a passage frames an idea as a comparison — “A matters more than B” — the direction of that comparison carries the whole content of the answer, and running the same words backwards produces a statement that says the opposite thing.
Applying it here
Find the sentence in the passage that speaks about business rather than about flow in general: “When doing business in Japan, process, manners, and how you work on something are more important than the final results.”
Separate the two compared terms: on one side the process, the manners and how the work is done; on the other side the final results.
Read off the direction the passage assigns: the way the work is carried out is placed above the outcome it produces.
Restate that direction in the wording of the answer set: manners and processes are more important than the final outcome. That is exactly what the passage asserts, so it is the answer.
Cross-check against the other statements
“Results are prioritized over the process” is the same comparison run backwards; the passage puts the final results below process and manners, not above them.
“Rituals are not significant in Japanese culture” contradicts the opening lines, which say rituals permeate daily life and business practices and that Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism are religions in which ritual outweighs absolute rules.
“Business processes are goal oriented” is a general claim about how work is organised, and it is not the influence the passage attributes to rituals: the business sentence compares process and manners with the final results, while a goal appears only as something a ritual breaks down into smaller substeps. It therefore does not state the relation the question asks about.
Answer
The passage supports the statement that manners and processes are more important than the final outcome.