An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead

An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead costs, it is considering setting up a "virtual office" instead of moving to an adjacent office building. Employees will do their work on computers, as they do now, but will do so at home, sharing their work with colleagues by communicating text and designs to colleagues' computers through telephone lines, receiving typed comments, and then revising the work until it is satisfactory.

Which of the following, if true, indicates a disadvantage of the virtual office plan?

A. The agency can move its computers and associated equipment into employees' homes without purchasing any new equipment or requiring employees to purchase such equipment.

B. To reach the current office building and return home, employees spend an average of one and a half hours per day commuting, usually in heavy traffic.

C. The employees of the advertising agency are accustomed to autonomy in monitoring their own progress and productivity.

D. Employees would be able to adapt quickly to using computers in a virtual office setting, since employees' current use of computers to produce designs requires a high level of skill.

E. Expressions and gestures in face-to-face exchanges are an important aid to employees in gauging the viability of new ideas they have proposed.

Clearly option E is the correct answer here.

Option A:- Strengthens or does not affect the argument but does not weaken the argument at all. It only states that how easily can the virtual office plan be set up.

Option B:- Strengthens the argument. As it states the negative of actual office and to save up on time of commute.

Option C:- Strengthens the argument stating that employees can easily work from home and they do not need other's recommendation or monitoring.

Option D:- Strengthens the argument.

Option E:- Weakens the argument by stating that face to face exchanges are important which does not happen in a virtual office.

Hence Option E is the correct answer. OA = E.

This was easier to identify.

An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead costs, it is considering setting up a "virtual office" instead of moving to an adjacent office building. Employees will do their work on computers, as they do now, but will do so at home, sharing their work with colleagues by communicating text and designs to colleagues' computers through telephone lines, receiving typed comments, and then revising the work until it is satisfactory.


Which of the following, if true, indicates a disadvantage of the virtual office plan?
A. The agency can move its computers and associated equipment into employees' homes without purchasing any new equipment or requiring employees to purchase such equipment.
Strengthens - no extra cost involved
B. To reach the current office building and return home, employees spend an average of one and a half hours per day commuting, usually in heavy traffic.
Strengthens - employees will save time
C. The employees of the advertising agency are accustomed to autonomy in monitoring their own progress and productivity.
Strengthens - Working from home won't decrease productivity
D. Employees would be able to adapt quickly to using computers in a virtual office setting, since employees' current use of computers to produce designs requires a high level of skill.
Strengthens - as employees already have the relevant tech skills
E. Expressions and gestures in face-to-face exchanges are an important aid to employees in gauging the viability of new ideas they have proposed.
Weakens - employees won't be able the gauge the viability of new ideas.

Answer E

GMATNinja VeritasPrepKarishma

The GOAL of the plan is: To reduce overhead costs, which I need to WEAKEN to achieve.
Does not overhead costs mean fixed costs as in furniture, PC, printer, etc?

I am confused between (C) and (E)

We are not necessarily looking to weaken the point about overhead. Using virtual offices should in fact reduce overhead because the company will not have to pay to rent/maintain/operate an office building. Having employees work from home will almost certainly save the company some money.

But does this plan have any disadvantages?


The plan involves sending text/designs via telephone lines. With this model, there is no face to face communication. Choice (E) suggests that face to face communication is important. So by moving to virtual offices, employees will lose this important aid. Thus, (E) represents a clear disadvantage of the plan.


This just means that employees are accustomed to "managing" themselves. In other words, they can still be productive even if they don't have a boss/supervisor monitoring them. This suggests that their productivity will NOT be negatively impacted when they start working from home. So (C) eliminates a possible disadvantage.

If, instead, (C) told us that the employees are NOT accustomed to autonomy, then (C) would be a good answer.

An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead costs, it is considering setting up a "virtual office" instead of moving to an adjacent office building. Employees will do their work on computers, as they do now, but will do so at home, sharing their work with colleagues by communicating text and designs to colleagues' computers through telephone lines, receiving typed comments, and then revising the work until it is satisfactory.

Which of the following, if true, indicates a disadvantage of the virtual office plan?
A. The agency can move its computers and associated equipment into employees' homes without purchasing any new equipment or requiring employees to purchase such equipment. Strengthens as there shall be no additional costs involved in virtual office set up

B. To reach the current office building and return home, employees spend an average of one and a half hours per day commuting, usually in heavy traffic. - Strengthens as it suggests a possible advantage of virtual office set up

C. The employees of the advertising agency are accustomed to autonomy in monitoring their own progress and productivity. It does not affects the argument at all as employees are able to independently assess their own work and monitor their progress so not a weakener

D. Employees would be able to adapt quickly to using computers in a virtual office setting, since employees' current use of computers to produce designs requires a high level of skill. Strengthens as its an advantage of setting up a virtual office set up

E. Expressions and gestures in face-to-face exchanges are an important aid to employees in gauging the viability of new ideas they have proposed - [b][b]CORRECT as it says that face to face exchanges are very important in assessing the viability of new ideas which is not possible in a virtual office set up[/b][/b]

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