Poor attendance is the reason for lower motivation among the office employees,…
2024
Poor attendance is the reason for lower motivation among the office employees, claim the business agencies. Once the employees change their behavior, they'd be more attentive at work which will eventually increase their attendance. This can only happen when the supervisors concentrate less on attendance policies and more on techniques to motivate the employees.
Which of the following, if true, would most effectively weaken the agencies' argument?
- A.
The motivation to be attentive at work can be improved through time spent with family.
- B.
The degree of interest in working that an employee develops is a direct result of the amount of time he or she spends in the office.
- C.
Showing an employee how to be motivated is insufficient; the employee must also accept responsibility for his or her own decisions.
- D.
Unmotivated employees do not perform as well in office as other employees.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
CONCEPT: In a 'weaken the argument' critical-reasoning question, the passage rests on an unstated causal assumption linking two events. The correct answer does not restate the conclusion -- it introduces a fact that undermines that assumed causal link, reducing confidence that the proposed action will actually produce the claimed effect.
APPLICATION: Here the agencies first claim that poor attendance is the cause of low motivation -- that is, attendance drives motivation. Their proposed fix, however, needs the reverse to be true: supervisors are told to raise motivation directly (through techniques, not attendance rules) so that motivated employees become more attentive and attendance then rises. For this fix to work, motivation must be able to cause attendance, not merely follow from it. The statement that an employee's interest in working is a direct result of the time already spent in the office points the causal arrow the other way: motivation is described as the effect, and attendance (time in office) as the cause. That casts real doubt on the fix's underlying assumption -- if motivation is produced by attendance in this way, supervisors cannot be confident that raising motivation directly will, in turn, raise attendance, undermining the basis for the agencies' proposed solution.
Motivation improving through time spent with family: relocates the source of motivation outside the office and says nothing about whether raising motivation can raise office attendance, so it leaves the causal assumption untouched.
Motivation techniques alone being insufficient without personal responsibility: adds another condition alongside motivation but does not contradict the idea that motivation can drive attendance, so the core assumption survives.
Unmotivated employees performing worse than motivated ones: only compares performance outcomes, not attendance, and never questions whether motivating employees changes their attendance.
Because only the time-in-office statement casts real doubt on the causal direction the supervisors' proposed fix depends on, it is the option that most effectively weakens the agencies' argument.