LSAT 140 – Section 2 – Question 13

LSAT 140 - Section 2 - Question 13

December 2013

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT140 S2 Q13	+LR +Exp	Resolve reconcile or explain +RRE Causal Reasoning +CausR Net Effect +NetEff	A 3% 157 B 5% 157 C 8% 160 D 5% 158 E 79% 165	139 149 160	+Medium	149.441 +SubsectionMedium

Consultant: The dramatic improvements in productivity achieved during the Industrial Revolution resulted in large part from standardization of processes and procedures coupled with centralization of planning and decision making. Yet, in recent years, many already productive companies have further improved their productivity by giving individual employees greater influence in decision making and in how they do their work.

"Surprising" Phenomenon

How have many already productive companies further improved their productivity by implementing less centralized planning and decisionmaking, even though more centralization has been known to lead to huge increases in productivity?

Objective

The correct answer should suggest a difference between the already productive companies and the average company that could explain why the already productive companies can increase their productivity more through less centralization.

Most companies still try to improve productivity mainly through greater standardization and centralization of decision making.

What most companies do doesn’t explain why the already productive companies we’re concerned with in the stimulus can increase productivity through less centralization.

Increased productivity is not the only benefit of giving individual employees greater control over their work; job satisfaction increases as well.

This might provide another reason companies may want less centralization, but doesn’t help explain how companies can become more productive through les centralization.

Most of the increases in industrial productivity that have occurred in recent years have been due to the introduction of advanced technology like industrial robots.

Even if most increase in productivity has occurred through technology, we still know some companies have increased productivity through less centralization. This answer doesn’t explain how this happened.

The innovations of the Industrial Revolution are only now being applied in those companies in which individual employees have traditionally been entirely in control of how they do their work.

This answer tells us what’s happening in companies in which individual employees already have complete individual control. This doesn’t relate to the already productive companies we’re concerned with in the stimulus, which are giving their employees more and more control.

Increases in productivity in highly productive companies depend on management’s broad application of innovative ideas solicited from individual employees about their work.

Once a company is already highly productive, further productivity comes from individual employees’ ideas. This could be why less centralization (and greater autonomy for employees) is how already productive companies become more productive.

LSAT 140 – Section 2 – Question 13

LSAT 140 - Section 2 - Question 13

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LSAT PrepTest 140 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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