According to a particular version of the law of unintended consequence

Question

According to a particular version of the law of unintended consequences policies implemented to achieve certain ends often have the consequence of making it more difficult to achieve those ends. Suppose that a government agency has announced its intention to enforce existing policies whereby communications utilizing agency channels and equipment are subject to monitoring, with employees to be investigated and potentially dismissed if they are found to be breaking the rules or not doing their jobs.

In different rows of the table, select a situation P and a situation R such that, if the agency’s announcement was intended to discourage P but inadvertently encouraged R, the combined situation would best illustrate the principle described in the passage. Make only two selections, one in each column.

Sajjad1994 · Accepted Answer

Official Explanation

RO1

The government agency announced that it intends to monitor communications that take place using its channels and equipment. Situation P is what this announcement is intended to discourage. Monitoring employees’ communications could not be intended to discourage evidence … being reliable enough (A), investigations … remaining open until proof is obtained (C), or employees reducing their time spent on non.work activities (E). Although it is possible that the monitoring could be used to determine how often employees use private phones and accounts when doing the agency’s business (B), the announcement states that employees found to be breaking the rules or not doing their jobs will potentially be dismissed. Therefore, its intent is likely to discourage employees from spending large amounts of time at work on non-work-related activities.

The correct answer is Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities.

RO2

Situation R is an activity that, if inadvertently encouraged by the announcement, would make it more difficult for the agency to achieve the goal intended by the announcement. As explained in the analysis of RO1, the goal of monitoring employees’ use of agency communications equipment and accounts is to reduce their time spent on social media and other non-work-related activities. However, to avoid being monitored, employees may simply begin using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business (B). This situation would, paradoxically, make it harder for the agency to monitor and thus discourage employees’ non-work-related activities.

The correct answer is Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business.

Apt0810 · Answer

R: Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business,so that the communications remain secure (in a kind of VPN) and would have less chances to be hacked and can be easily monitored without any external intervention
P: Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities,so this would be risky since it could cause an information leak or any suspicious activity through which the employee can release any information in the dark web, compromising the security

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KarishmaB · Answer

Given  : According to the law, policies implemented to achieve certain ends often have the consequence of making it more difficult to achieve those ends i.e. the policies have opposite effect.

A govt agency's policy  : Agency channels will be monitored with consequences for employees not doing their jobs.

P would be something for which the policy was announced - say to discourage wastage of time or to discourage sharing sensitive data etc. 
R would be something which got encouraged because of the policy.

We need to select P and R such that the policy of monitoring agency channels was brought in to discourage P (which is a problematic situation requiring rectification) but it led to encouraging R which in turn makes it harder to discourage P - the policy had opposite effect.
 First let's look for P - a problem situation for which the policy could have been brought into effect.

Evidence of employee misconduct sometimes being reliable enough to result in disciplinary action.
  
 Cannot be P. Is not a problem situation. Ignore for now.

Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business.

Is a problem situation but seems unlikely that it is P. How will monitoring agency channels help in reducing company business on private channels? Private channels need to be monitored for that.  
 In any case, we will see.

Investigations into employee misconduct remaining open until definitive proof of wrongdoing is obtained.

Cannot be P. Is not a problem situation. Ignore for now.

Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities.

Is a problem for which the policy could be brought in. Could be P.

Employees reducing their time spent at work on social media and other non-work-related activities.

Not a problem. Cannot be P.

So now P = Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities. 
 It could have led to employees switching to private channels for social media etc and then also conducting company business on private channels. Hence it could encourage "Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business." Now keeping tabs on employees and avoiding time wastage has become even harder.

Therefore, R = Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business.

Select statements 4 and 2 for P and R respectively.

PeachSnapple1 · Answer

Basically we need to identify two answers that are related to the topic of    , or     in short. The only difference is that P needs to be explicitly stated in the passage, which is    , while Q needs to introduce a new information.

gullyboy09 · Answer

Hi  KarishmaB  thankyou for the below. We rejected second option for  P  based on the below

But the one we selected as  P  - "Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities". Here also how monitoring agency channels will help? If we are assuming that employees use agency channels for social media and non-work related activities, then we can also assume (which makes more sense to me) that employees use private channels to access social media during work time. As far as I have seen in corporate, we all use private channels to access social media, not company channels, even most of the companies have already blocked social media on their channels. I rejected this as  P  straight away because what's the point of monitoring agency channels for that to discourage.

Secondly, I also see a bit of disconnect here as  P  is about stopping employees from using social media on work time, whereas  R  in answer talks about people started using private accounts for business, but how can we infer that it is making more difficult to stop people from using social media?  R  doesn't say that people started using private lines for "social media". Yes this creates a new separate problem that they started using it for business purpose but principle was that policy makes it more difficult for the  same problem  to be resolved.  MartyMurray  ,  IanStewart  would you be able to help me here as this is a OG question and I would really like to know if I am missing something here.

According to a particular version of the law of unintended consequence

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P	R	Statements
		Evidence of employee misconduct sometimes being reliable enough to result in disciplinary action.
		Employees frequently using private mobile phones and email accounts even when conducting company business.
		Investigations into employee misconduct remaining open until definitive proof of wrongdoing is obtained.
		Employees spending large amounts of time at work on social media and other non-work-related activities.
		Employees reducing their time spent at work on social media and other non-work-related activities.

GMAT Two-part Analysis (TPA) Questions

According to a particular version of the law of unintended consequence

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