Please rate my AWA
[#permalink]
25 Apr 2016, 00:09
Argument -
"The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in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."
My response -
According to the argument, general belief is that workers are not sympathetic or interested in management issues or don't bother about it. But the argument then goes on to say that this is wrong because as per a survey, majority of workers were interested in knowing about management issues like restructuring and welfare programs.
The argument is flawed as it fails to answer key concerns which are required to substantiate the argument. The argument is silent on the details of the management issues or what all constitutes management issues. Neither does it tell if the 1200 workers involved in the survey were not already directly or indirectly related to management tasks. If they had already been somehow part of carrying out management tasks somehow, then the survey would not be fair.
The argument also goes on to assume that the workers had given honest answers in the survey. There is a possibility that they wanted to please their management. Next it assumes that a survey on management tasks like restructuring and welfare programs is all that constitutes management issues. But it is possible that these topics were of a worker's interest and thus the survey supports worker's sympathetic nature towards management issues. The argument could be flawed if the apathetic nature of workers was due to their inability to understand management tasks or what goes on at higher level. If this was the case , it just provided an alternate explanation for workers' apathetic nature and thus the survey or the argument as a whole would not make sense at all.
The argument could be evaluated more aptly if all management issues were detailed out and then a survey had been carried out involving each of those, the issues given appropriate weightage and the survey results analyzed accordingly. A complete study of how a workers respond to management issues and to what extent were they willing to dive in would have warranted the then drawn argument's conclusions.
Thus, the argument fails at many steps to provide support or proof through which argument could be considered persuasive. If the argument was analyzed in the light of all points discussed above, then the argument could have been considered as thorough and convincing.