#25 - Sarah: Our regulations for staff review are vague and

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—Principle. The correct answer choice is (B)

Sarah points out that the regulations for staff review are vague and diffi cult to interpret. She offers
the example of regulations that state that unsatisfactory performance will be met with dismissal, but
those same regulations do not defi ne unsatisfactory performance. She concludes that some staffers
may be dismissed simply because their personal views are different from their supervisors’ views.

Sarah’s reasoning is fl awed because she ignores the likelihood that other employee contracts and
guidelines defi ne required performance quite well, and that the regulations are merely broad so as
to avoid restatements or possible confl icts when future policy changes are made. Furthermore, she
cynically assumes that supervisors will equate personal views with job performance and use their
positions of power to blatantly exceed the review guidelines.

Regardless of the fl aws in Sarah’s argument, you are asked to fi nd a principle that will strengthen
Sarah’s conclusion, which is that “some staff may be dismissed merely because their personal views
confl ict with those of their supervisors.”

Answer choice (A): This principle does not serve to strengthen the claim that supervisors will or can
act in a capricious manner, so this answer does not strengthen the conclusion.

If anything, this choice might actually serve to weaken the stimulus. If performance that falls slightly
below standards is not met with dismissal, that might establish that supervisors have some leeway.
But, it also establishes that supervisors have some tendency toward leniency. If supervisors are
lenient, how does that help establish that they will terminate employees for personal differences?

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. If supervisors have the sole prerogative
to interpret the regulations, that means that there are no other documents or guidelines that could
restrict the supervisors from making the interpretation they wish to make. Accordingly, the
supervisors would then have the power to dismiss employees for whatever reason they saw fi t, and
that fact helps strengthen the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): Sarah suggests that the regulations could be used to inappropriately punish
people for having certain personal views, but she does not establish that supervisors could take
that kind of action. This response helps support the idea that employees are accountable for their
performance, and that is contrary to the idea (or at worst, neutral) that they would be punished for
their personal views.

Answer choice (D): The argument attempted to show that some staff could be dismissed for their
personal views. This answer only shows that employees can be kept in control or withheld from
promotion. As those two issues are not the same, this answer does not assist in establishing Sarah’s
reasoning.

An answer such as this one can be attractive because it paints the company in a negative light.
However, the task in this question is not to simply show that the company has poor policies, but
rather that the policy in place can lead to the termination of an employee over their personal views.
Always keep in mind precisely what you are supposed to strengthen in a question like this one.

Answer choice (E): Whether or not employees consider specifi c regulations to be fairer is not central
to the issue at hand, which concerns how supervisors act.

[est15]

Maybe I am misunderstanding the question, but I thought that the generalization needed to help justify Sarah's reasoning would be a principle that backs up her last sentence. Thus, I picked D. Is that not the right approach to this question?

[David Boyle]

Maybe I am misunderstanding the question, but I thought that the generalization needed to help justify Sarah's reasoning would be a principle that backs up her last sentence. Thus, I picked D. Is that not the right approach to this question?

Hello est15,

Answer D is much weaker, and is about being placed into a subordinate position, not about being fired from one. Answer B is much stronger, since it gives supervisors total say about interpretation.

Hope this helps,
David

[lsatlearner]

I'm struggling to understand how B is correct in this problem. The argument itself was challenging for me, this is what I've come up with in terms of structure:

Premise 1: The regulations state that a staff member who is performing unsatisfactorily will face dismissal, but they fail to define unsatisfactory performance.

Premise 2: Some staff may be dismissed merely because their personal views conflict with those of their supervisors. [Presumably because the regulations are unclear, so staff sometimes --perhaps mistakenly-- feel justified in firing someone for this reason. Is this an accurate understanding of this premise?]

Conclusion: Our regulations for staff review are vague and thus difficult to interpret.


I don't really understand the argument. I think the conclusion is the underlying cause of premise 2, but that seems to suggest premise 2 is more the conclusion. What is the main conclusion of this argument?

I think the question stem is asking for a generalization that would strengthen Sarah's argument. But I don't completely understand her argument, so I don't see how (B) "Interpreting regulations is a prerogative that belongs solely to supervisors" could be the answer. It seems like there is an implicit assumption that the supervisors are manipulating the regulations somehow, merely because they are in charge of enforcing them.



Please help!!

[Ron Gore]

Hi LSATLearner,

First, I love your name. Awesome!

As I started reading your question, I was concerned for you, because you had misidentified the conclusion. But then I say that you were struggling because you had, in fact found the conclusion and were confused by a presumption (I'm guessing) that since the first sentence contained the "thus" that it was the conclusion. After all, the last sentence has the word "thus" in it too!

Don't just go by keywords. Context is king. The last sentence is the conclusion, for the very reasons that you stated. Right on!

Answer choice (B) strengthens the last sentence of the stimulus by telling us that only supervisors have the right to interpret the regulations, enabling the supervisors can fire employees for something as inappropriate as having personal views that conflict with those of the supervisor.

Does that help?

Ron

[lsatlearner]

Thank you for your response, Ron!

You did clarify this for me. One other question came to mind: in the question stem, can "if applicable to Sarah's company" essentially mean "if true"? And is this a strengthen or a sufficient/justify question?

Thank you so much!

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi LSATLearner,

This is a Strengthen, Principle question. "If applicable to Sarah's company" basically means if the principle applies to this scenario, or is true for this scenario.

Hope that helps!

[mankariousc]

Hello!

I am still a little confused on why D is the correct answer. Could you further explain it?

Thanks!

[Ricky_Hutchens]

Hi mankariousc,

The correct answer is actually B. It strengthens the argument considerably by making it so that supervisors have all of the authority and thus are able to dismiss staff for any reason that they can fit into the vague regulation.

[peterius]

I did this one over a month ago and having found that I'm making no progress in my studies, I decided to go back and check it. I still don't get it.

A month ago, I chose E, and I can see why that's wrong. After all, who cares about what the employees consider fair? Nothing about employee considerations or fairness is stated in the premise. So my E must be wrong, or that's what I'm telling myself.

But none of the other answers make any sense. And I remember somehow rationalizing B to myself a month ago but I no longer remember how I did it.

First, the conclusion stuff. I don't think the conclusion is clear here and a previous poster says that the poster he replies to got the conclusion wrong even if he was struggling with it, but I don't think he did. The powerscore books say that sometimes "thus" is put before something that's not a conclusion in order to trick you.

The conclusion could be "our regulations are vague and difficult to interpret", and then "for instance" could be an example of that, the whole thing a premise or sub-conclusion supporting it: premise 1: regulation about unsatisfactory performance, sub conclusion: some staff could be dismissed for their personal views... so as a whole this is a good example of the overall conclusion of vague and difficult to interpret regulations, its an example of one.

OR, one could say "our regulations are vague and difficult to interpret" is premise 1. Ignore the "For instance," and consider the second premise "lousy regulation about unsatisfactory performance dismissal" and then say that both these premises... although the first one in this case isn't really necessary, support the conclusion of "staff being dismissed for personal views".

So I really feel like the conclusion is not clear here and you could read it either way.

But then this B... I can't remember how I rationalized it... it was something about assuming that somehow staff might otherwise be involved in interpreting regulations regarding their own dismissal? I mean it was something really counter-intuitive like that... I think I tried seeing this as an assumption question rather than a justify... but wow, I mean obviously they're not going to fire themselves... and how does that justify anything and what needs justifying, there's barely an argument here... depending on what's viewed as the conclusion... if it's a conclusion and then "for instance" as an example of that... then "difficult to interpret" and "fail to define" are so close... there's really barely an argument here... If you read it the other way with the conclusion as "staff can be dismissed for personal views" then that sort of fits...

but not really, so say somehow the employees were involved in interpreting the regulations of their own dismissal... they still wouldn't be able to understand what unsatisfactory performance is because the regulations "fail to define" it... so even assuming this ridiculousness, it doesn't affect any of the "argument".

And then I go back to E...

The stimulus is about running some organization and its common sense that people who are unhappy or see their employers as unfair, are likely to be less productive. Presumably the organization values productivity, and one could say that implicit in Sarah's "argument" is that the regulations should be changed to be less vague and less difficult to interpret. Why? Because they would be fairer. It's not great but... seems a little better than the others.

(I look at this again and again and again... way over my 1 minute that I would have on the test... there's another way to rationalize B, similar to what the previous poster says. If somehow there are individuals in charge of supervising staff and dismissing them but that aren't called supervisors... and these "non-supervisor supervisors" are involved in the dismissal process and have a role in interpreting the vague regulations, then B would support the last sentence as conclusion in that it would rule out anything besides that "merely" since the non-supervisor supervisors wouldn't have any say. Is that what I'm supposed to do with this?)