Many managers are influenced by dangerous myths about pay that lead to

Hi Experts,

Could you please provide detailed explanation on Q4?
It's quite hard, and I cannot locate the relevant sentence to answer this question.

Really appreciate.
Thank you.

Hi,
Can experts explain how A is the answer for question 4?

The option A doesn't say "often fails to bring about intended changes in companies" but says "often fails to bring about intended changes in companies compensation system". So doesn't that make the option wrong?

Need URGENT help on question 2 and 4th

WHY I CHOSE B and reject A. please check

4. The author of the passage suggests which of the following about the advice that the consulting firms discussed in the passage customarily give to companies attempting to control costs?





It seems from the last line that consultants were able to bring changes in the company as per their intention( this intention is contrary to changes needed for company performances)

A. It often fails to bring about the intended changes in companies’ compensation systems.
Intended: why it doesn’t refer to intentions of consultants
Company managers don’t have idea what can they do to improve performance, so they rely on consultants advise and their intention is to bring changes in compensation policies whether it is required or not.
It means that consultants were able to bring changes what they intended to bring. It doesn’t mention whether those changes were good or bad for company.
So why still A correct


B. It has highly influenced views that predominate in prominent business journals.
For B,
prominent business journals: view that labor cost and rate are same
consultant views: labor cost and labor rate are same and they need to bring these changes in com[any compensation policies.
The option doesn’t refer that BJ views need to be influenced by consultants. These views are influenced because managers are greatly influenced with consultants advise. So in summary such kind of influenced views are found in business journals also. Hence B seems to be correct


Please help me to reject B and accept A.

Kindly help GMATNinja VeritasKarishma


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WHY I want to choose B as first choice, E as 2nd choice and reject D as right answer.

2. The author of the passage mentions business journals (line 39) primarily in order to




In the beginning of 2nd para , BJ had view that labor cost and labor rate are same. Then with the example of prominent business journals , author wants to emphasize that the particular view they held that labor cost and labor rate same is WRONG actually. So this matches option B.




Moreover, The myth is also perpetuated by the compensation-consulting industry
What does ALSO refer to here? It seems BJ perpetuated view by mentioning that labor cost and labor rates are SAME. This is one way how this particular myth can be spread.
SO E seems to be 2nd closet answer .


Business managers are related with consultant advise. I don’t see any relation of business journals with business managers . Moreover, the author is talking about BJ that refers labor cost and rates are same in the beginning of 2nd para. The author main purpose to write this line was to indicate that BJ also has the similar view from the example of german labour cost.
So no where D seems closer to right answer . hence I rejected D

Kindly help GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

https://gmatclub.com/forum/many-manager ... l#p2620945


i analyzed deeply and still not able to arrive at right answer . Please check my reasoning for question 2nd and 4th. Kindly advise pls

Not a 700 level passage at all, 4 mins all correct, infact las 2 questions are 600 level, kindly re- classify.

The difficulty levels are as follow:

Question #1: 600
Question #2: 600
Question #3: 700
Question #4: 500
Question #5: 500

Overall: 600

The difficulty level tag has been updated.

Thank you

One side , good for you and others who can solve it very easily and other side i feel pity for me that doubts still hover in my mind for Q4 and Q2 even these questions seem not hard ones as tagged by mr. SajjadAhmad

Could you please suggest what i am missing for 2nd and 4th?
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For Question 4:
I rejected A because intended changes (not mentioned whose intentions) and managers agree what consultants advise. It is not mentioned in the passage whether changes were successful finally.
If A had mentioned that often fail to[b] improve performance [/b]then A could have been undoubtedly right answer.

For B: views of consultants and prominent business journals are same, It is not mentioned that they copied or influence each other views. The views which are influenced were found in prominent business journals. It means these views could be hot in market among various firms ( consulting, journalism etc.)
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For 2nd:
The myth is also perpetuated by the compensation-consulting industry

This also make me confused, it could seem business journals also perpetuated view ( making option E) valid
For D: Business journals are in beginning of passage. Managers are dealing with consultant firms and there is no information whether they ( business journals) really use this as source of support .
________________________________________________________________

Kindly help GMATNinja VeritasKarishma AjiteshArun

I am no expert but here you go.


For question 2 - Please read the question and understand what it is asking you, "the author mentions business journals primarily in order to", which means in the context of the passage what is is the intention of the author when he is mentioning business journals, what point does he want to drive home? Now coming to the passage again, "For example, business journals..." what is this example for... if you have analyzed the passage as you have stated above you will recognise that this "Example" being cited is to bolster his argument about the "myth" = commonly held view amongst managers, these words are interchangeably used here. Hence option D is the correct choice as it helps the author exemplify his point and is a "Source of support" for managers this can be clearly inferred from the starting lines of that paragraph - "The myth that labor rates and labor costs are equivalent is supported by business journalists". So in summary managers use the business journal to give credence to their "myth" because they both conflate the labor costs and rates and hence essentially believe in the same thing.

My understanding is that you have not really understood the passage (i could be wrong) because if you did, option E would be clearly eliminated and "business journals" are not in the beginning of the passage they are in the second para.

Now coming to why E is incorrect, completely wrong, how can the myth be dispelled when the journals themselves are propagating it!

Q4. Now again what consulting companies have is a "vested interest" in advising companies in a way to maximise their gains. Number 1 - those changes in rates are simpler to understand and easier to implement hence managers prefer them but the problem is they don't actually address the "real cause" because rates do not equal cost

Number 2 - Now it does not state whether the consulting companies actually "believe" this or not but they definitely perpetuate it because it suits them and helps them get more work because this strategy is likely to create more problems than solutions and then the consultants will get roped in again, hence it is in the interest to not advise the companies in the correct manner too. So the advice they give them to control costs fails to deliver the results because it was never meant to solve the problem in the first place it was an easy pill given to managers which would create more opportunities for the consultants.

Hence option A is the correct choice, it is very easy to eliminate the rest so not going to get into it. For B since you are stuck - how did you arrive at that conclusion, the passage never mentions that one party influenced the other, you are making unwarranted assumptions, also note the passage says consulting firms have "an incentive to keep the myth alive" they may not even believe in it and yet perpetuate it for the $

Finally I can reject C for Q2. vested interest is for consulting companies ; not for business journalists, so this can not be the correct option:)

AndrewN,
Can you please throw some light on option B of question 3?
I am not getting the hang of this inference. I marked this based on elimination.
But how is this an inference?

Remember, krndatta, an inference comes in one of two basic forms in RC:

• An answer choice conveys the same idea as one that is stated in the passage, but uses somewhat different language (e.g., if the passage says that X is more efficient than Y, a correct answer choice might say that Y is not as efficient as X).
• An answer choice may stitch together different parts of the passage to form a single statement that is not directly expressed as such in the passage.

We are looking at more of a type 1 inference here, the easier of the two. The passage tells us in the first paragraph that labor costs and labor rates are not in fact the same: one company could pay its workers considerably more than another and yet have lower labor costs if that company's productivity were higher due to the talent of its workforce, the efficiency of its work processes, or other factors. This idea is more concisely expressed in answer choice (B):


Perhaps the inference is clearer now. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

Hi AndrewN

IN question 4, I'm a bit thrown off by the correct answer. Nowhere in the passage it is mentioned that the advice given by the firms FAILS to bring about the intended changes in companies’ compensation systems. It is however stated that that the implementation of the advice brings about NEW problems. Does the influx of NEW problems necessarily mean that the advice failed completely? Isn't the language a bit extreme? Maybe the advice did bring about an intended change and new problems were an effect of that change.

Also, why isn't option E correct? The whole mention of the firms seems to revolve around the basic idea of biasness in the nature of advice given by the compensation firms. Due to their limited scope of work, they are bound to give advices that are inclined to increase the business within the firms.

Hello, Namangupta1997. Have you seen this post at the top of the page? It also questions the viability of (A). Answer choice (E) might have been what I picked when I first laid eyes on the passage: it was the one question I missed from the set. The following line in particular stands out:


That is not a far cry from what answer choice (E) says.

We seem to be in agreement for now. I would let go of this one and move on to other passages.

- Andrew

Can someone please help me with Q4.
I was confused between option a and c and went ahead with option c because of following logic.
Option A. . It often fails to bring about the intended changes in companies’ compensation systems.
My view : It does bring about intended changes "IN" compensation systems but not the intended changes of reducing the cost. > i.e. consulting companies intention was to change the compensation system which is what they implement.

Option C: As stated in the passage "The myth is also perpetuated by the compensation-consulting industry, which has its own incentives to keep such myths alive" ... the myth is mentioned in lines 4 to 9 in the passage - "One such myth is that labor rates, the rate per hour paid to workers, are identical with labor costs, the money spent on labor in relation to the productivity of the labor force. This myth leads to the assumption that a company can simply lower its labor costs by cutting wages."
This means that the objective of the reduction in rate is to reduce the company's cost leads in fact to an increase in the company's cost

GMATNinja and karishmaB Question 4 seems to be giving some confusion among all of us, can we get some expert explanations? Thanks!

We wouldn't worry too much about question 4 until someone can verify the OA with a screenshot. It's not clear whether question 4 appears on the official practice tests at all.

If anyone has a screenshot of the question and OA, please post it here! Unless we can verify the question's legitimacy, it isn't worth your time.