Manager: Support The only employees who should receive bonuses this year are those who were exceptionally productive over the past year. Liang is an excellent account executive, but Support she works in a corporate division that has failed to meet its productivity goals for the year. Thus Conclusion Liang should not receive a bonus this year.
The author concludes that Liang should not receive a bonus this year. This is based on the fact that the only employees who should get a bonus are those who were exceptionally productive. And the corporate division in which Liang works wasn’t met its productivity goals for the year.
The author assumes that if the corporate division in which she works wasn’t exceptionally productive, then Liang wasn’t exceptionally productive. This is a whole-to-part fallacy. This overlooks the possibility that Liang could have been exceptionally productive, even if her division wasn’t; maybe other people were dragging down the whole division despite Liang’s productivity.
The reasoning in the manager's argument is flawed in that the argument
fails to take into account the possibility that the standards by which productivity is judged might vary across different divisions of a corporation
This possibility wouldn’t undermine the argument. Even if productivity is measured in different ways, it’s still the case that we can determine whether one division is productive using the relevant ways of measuring productivity.
overlooks the possibility that a corporation as a whole can have a profitable year even though one division of the corporation does not
The conclusion doesn’t assert that the corporation didn’t have a profitable year. So this possibility doesn’t undermine the reasoning.
fails to justify its use of one group's performance as the basis for a conclusion about a wholly different group
The conclusion isn’t about a different group. It’s about Liang, who is an individual within a group.
reaches a conclusion about the performance of one member of a group merely on the basis of the performance of the group as a whole
We know that Liang’s corporate division didn’t meet productivity goals. That doesn’t mean Liang herself failed to meet productivity goals or wasn’t exceptionally productive. This is why the argument’s reasoning is not persuasive.
takes for granted that an employee who has an unproductive year will not be exceptionally productive in subsequent years
The author doesn’t conclude that Liang shouldn’t get the bonus in subsequent years. The argument concerns only this year.
Answer five questions and we'll estimate your score.
It takes about five minutes.
Take the free diagnostic