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Managers at the Empresa corporation plan to implement a new policy of filling permanent positions in the company only with people who have already worked for the company in temporary positions. The managers reason that this policy will gradually improve average employee productivity, because workers who proved less productive in the temporary positions will not be hired for the permanent positions.
Which of the following, if true, would present the most serious challenge for the managers' plan
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| Managers at the Empresa corporation plan to implement a new policy of filling permanent positions in the company only with people who have already worked for the company in temporary positions. |
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| The managers reason that this policy will gradually improve average employee productivity, because workers who proved less productive in temporary positions will not be hired for the permanent positions. |
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The passage presents a straightforward cause-and-effect argument. First, we get the managers' plan (hire permanent workers only from temp workers), then we get their reasoning (this will improve productivity by filtering out less productive workers).
The new hiring policy will gradually improve average employee productivity at Empresa corporation.
The managers use a filtering logic: if we only promote productive temp workers to permanent positions and exclude the less productive ones, then our permanent workforce will have higher average productivity. It's a simple screening mechanism where temporary positions act as a testing ground.
Weaken - We need to find information that would reduce belief in the managers' conclusion that this policy will improve average employee productivity
The managers claim this policy will 'gradually improve average employee productivity' by filtering out less productive workers from temp positions. The key assumption is that temp performance predicts permanent performance.
To weaken this argument, we need to find scenarios that show why the policy might NOT improve productivity. We should look for ways the managers' reasoning could backfire - perhaps temp work doesn't predict permanent work performance, or the policy creates other problems that hurt productivity, or there are better workers they're excluding.
This choice tells us about current permanent employees and their backgrounds, but it doesn't challenge the future effectiveness of the new policy. The fact that few current permanent employees came from temp positions doesn't mean the new policy won't work going forward. This is about past hiring practices, not future policy effectiveness.
This actually supports the managers' plan rather than challenging it. If temp workers would be more motivated and productive as permanent employees, that suggests the policy could work even better than expected. More motivation typically leads to higher productivity, which aligns with the managers' goals.
While this creates a practical constraint, it doesn't challenge the core logic that the policy will improve productivity. Having fewer permanent positions than qualified temp workers just means they'll need to be more selective, which could actually enhance the filtering effect the managers want.
This presents the most serious challenge because it suggests that highly productive workers won't even enter the temp worker pool that the managers plan to draw from. If the best potential employees skip temporary positions entirely and go elsewhere, then the managers' policy would systematically exclude the most productive candidates. This directly undermines their goal of improving productivity through better hiring.
This suggests managers are poor at evaluating productivity before hiring, but it doesn't specifically challenge the new policy. In fact, if managers are bad at initial evaluations, having temp positions as a trial period might actually be helpful for better assessment.