GMAT Essays (AWA)

[ The following appeared in the editorial section of a corporate newsletter:
"The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a
recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey
questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits
programs."
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.]

Here's my Essay:-

The author has concluded that workers are very much aware about managements issues and that the common notion that workers are generally apathetic about issues at the management level is wither false or is at least outdated. The author provides survey results to provide evidence to support his conclusion and has provided a poorly reasoned argument. The author has based his conclusion only on the basis of the single survey that leads to a highly unconvincing conclusion because of insufficient premises and unsubstantiated assumptions as analyzed below.

First of all, the author mentions about the recently published survey that indicated that 79 percent of 1200 workers who responded to survey expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesigning of benefits programs. The author has hastily assumed that corporate restructuring and redesigning of benefits programs are the only issues with the management. Moreover, the author fails to consider other management issues such as employee satisfaction, employee career progression, etc. Thus the survey on just few issues is not sufficient to prove that workers are concerned and are aware about all of the management issues. This renders the argument highly unconvincing to a majority of readers.

Secondly, the 1200 workers who responded to the survey are not representative as a whole. What if the total number of workers actually were about 10,000. Thus it is very likely that a majority of workers had not responded to the survey, which highly undermines the conclusion. Furthermore, it is highly possible that a majority of workers, who had not responded to the survey, are unaware of management issues. The author fails to provide complete picture in his argument .

Thirdly, the survey questionnaire was only about the interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs. Just because the workers showed high level of interest, doesn't mean that workers are not apathetic about management issues. The possibility that workers have a highly level of interest but are not aware of management issues renders a weak conclusion and less convincing argument to its readers.

Therefore, the author fails to provide substantiated explanations to his assumptions along with insufficient evidences that weakens his argument. The argument could be strengthened by providing a holistic survey that will talk about responses from all the workers on all the management issues. If the author truly hopes to strengthen his argument, he would have to fix the flaws in his logic, clearly explicate his assumptions, and provide more evidence to support. Without these things, his poorly reasoned argument is likely to convince few people.