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The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about managemen
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28 Jul 2020, 17:50
The following appeared in the editorial section of a corporate newsletter:
“The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs.”
Discuss how well reasoned … etc.
In this argument, the author asserts that the common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated.
To substantiate this conclusion, the author cites statistics showing that a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs.
At first glance, the author’s argument appears to be somewhat convincing, but close scrutiny reveals that the line of reasoning employed is invalid and hence the conclusion is probably misleading due to several critical logic flaws.
In short, the analysis does not lend strong support to the author’s claim, and lack of credibility in reasoning makes the conclusion problematic.
First the author makes a hasty generalization.
In other words, the author assumes that the 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires is representative of all workers of the corporation as a whole.
However, the author provide no evidence to support this assumption. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. For example, there is a possibility that only the people who are highly interested in management participated to the survey. Without ruling out this possibility, the conclusion would be remain questionable.
Second, the author assumes that management issues do not consist of complex factors. Namely, the author claims that topic of corporate restructuring and of redesign of benefits program represent the management issues. However, the author neglects to provide substantial buttress for this assumption. For instance, there is a possibility that the management issues are composed of various elements, such as budget allocation, hiring process, ..etc..
To sum up, the author fails to provide adequate justification for this assumption.
The absence of essential information on objectivity of survey results in an unsound conclusion.
Therefore, to make this argument more logically convincing, the author should include the above-mentioned assumptions as additional evidence. If so, the argument would be much more persuasive.
Thank you in advance !!