PrepTest 146, Section 2, Question 8
Manager: The only employees who should receive bonuses(45 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the manager's(7 more words not shown)
- Afails to take(20 more words not shown)
- Boverlooks the possibility(20 more words not shown)
- Cfails to justify(17 more words not shown)
- Dreaches a conclusion(22 more words not shown)
- Etakes for granted(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if Liang is the one exceptionally productive person in a struggling division? Her coworkers might miss their goals badly enough that the division falls short even while she does outstanding work.
The rule concerns individual employees: only those who were exceptionally productive should get bonuses. That doesn't promise a bonus to every productive employee. A company might be unable to afford any bonuses. But to exclude Liang on this basis, the manager needs a reason to think she wasn't exceptionally productive.
What we’re looking for
Calling her an excellent account executive doesn't settle that either; excellence could reflect something other than the productivity measure being used. The problem is that the manager substitutes the division's result for Liang's result. For the flaw question, look for that unsupported move from the group's performance to one member's performance.
Working the answers
- A
Different divisions might use different productivity standards, but we aren't comparing Liang's division with another division. Even if every division used identical standards, the manager would still need to establish Liang's own performance. A doesn't identify that missing individual assessment.
- B
The corporation could make a profit despite one division's difficulties, but the conclusion concerns Liang's bonus. We need to know about her productivity, not the company's overall profitability. B shifts both the subject of the conclusion and the measure being discussed.
- C
This describes drawing a conclusion about a wholly different group. The manager instead reaches a conclusion about Liang, an individual within the division whose results are given. The important relationship is group to member, not one group to another unrelated group.
- DCorrect
The division missed its productivity goals, and the manager treats that as a reason to deny Liang a bonus under a rule about individual productivity. But the division's result doesn't establish that Liang failed to be exceptionally productive. She could have performed extremely well while the rest of the division brought the overall result down.
We don't have to prove that she deserves a bonus to find this flaw. The manager hasn't supplied the individual-performance evidence needed for this particular reason to deny her one.
- E
The manager says nothing about what Liang will do in later years. The argument concerns a bonus for the past year's work. It also hasn't established that she was unproductive during that year—that is exactly the inference we're questioning. A prediction about later performance isn't the mistake made here.
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