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The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in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.
The author of the argument claims that workers are not generally apathetic about management issues. The basis for this is that the opponet's point is outdated. The author further recommends that a recent survey indicats high interest of workers in some management topics such as corporate restructuring and redesign fo benefits programs. At first glance, the author's argument appears to be somewhat convincing, but close scrutiny reveals that the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend to strong support to what the author maintains.
In the first place, we must establish the meaning of the nebulous concept "management issues". If the term is synonymous with "orporate restructuring and redesign fo benefits programs", then the survey cited in the argument would strongly support the claim. But, normally, issues such as orporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs are just a subgroup of the management issues; other issues such as decision rights of the workers and welfare distribution should be included in the management issues. Thus, for the speaker, the term "management issues" must essentially carry the meaning as orporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs.
In the second place, the survey neglects to indicate how recently the survey was actually conducted. When samples are used to make general claim about a particular group, then the samples must be close enough in time to the generalization they are used to support, to that the historical changes will not invalidate the generalization. All we know in this survey is that the survey is rencently publised. The less recent the survey itself, the less reliable the results to indicate the generalization about the interest level of the workers.
In the third place, the autor are meant to strengtren his argument using some statistics. But these statistics are vague and oversimplified, and thus may distort the overall picture of the interest level of the workers. For example, 79 percent may be not significant enough to indicate a figure to support the arguer's conclusion. Moreover, the survey indicates that there are 1,200 respondents who expressed a high level of interest in the concerned topics, but fails to indicate the total number of the workers.
In the forth place, there is probable problem of biasness. perhaps workers who are interested in the management issues are more likely than other workers to respond to the survey--possibly because they found the questionnaires more interesting. Or perhaps a large number of workers pretended to be intereted in the management issues becaue of some wrongful reasons. In either event, the survey results would be useless in drawing conlusion about the workers' interest in the management issues.
In conclusion, the author fails to substantiate his claim that workers are not generally apathetic about management issues because he commits the above mentioned logical mistakes and fails to consider the whole situation comprehensively. To strengthen the argument, the author needs to convince us that the notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues are really outdated. Finally, to better evaluate the author's claim we need more information about the preciseness of the survey.
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[此贴子已经被作者于2005-5-17 22:21:03编辑过] | 
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发表于 2005-5-14 04:45:00
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