The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about managemen

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“The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in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.

The argument claims that the common notion that workers do not express interest in management issues is false based off the response from a survey of nearly 1200 workers. As stated, this argument contains some serious flaws in reasoning making the conclusion doubtful.

First, this argument assumes that the notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false based off a single survey of just 1200 workers. As stated, the author is assuming that these 1200 workers are an accurate representation of all workers. This reasoning is very flawed and the author provides no information or evidence to substantiate that these workers are representative of the entire working population. For example, this survey may have been taken at a single company, in a single industry, or in a single geography. If this were the case it would be inaccurate to assume that these reponses represent all workers. Additionally, is can be assumed that workers of different seniorty would care more or less about management issues. In order to strengthen this argument the author should provide more information on exactly how the workers were selected for this survey. Furthermore, if the author does want to make a statement based off this survey, they should narrow the claim to specify the type of workers that were surveyed.

Second, as the argument is stated it makes the assumption that the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs are representative of all management issues. However, in practice, management issues cover a variety of issues beyond the two stated by the author. Because of this, the claim the author makes is unlikely to be accurate. It seems likely that corporate restructuring and benefits programs would have a direct impact on workers at a company and therefore would be of importance to them. However, other key management issues, such as corporate strategy, would likely have less of a direct impact on lower level employees. Therefore, using the examples of corporate restructuing and benefits to claim that workers have a high level of interest in management issues fundamentally weakens the argument.

In conclusion, this argument is critically flawed for the above-stated reasons. In order to improve their reasoning, the author needs to provide further evidence to support the claim that the 1200 workers surveyed are representative of all workers. Additionally, further evidence is needed to support the claim that how workers feel about corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits is an accurate representation of all management issues.