Consultant: The dramatic improvements in productivity achieved during the Industrial Revolution resulted in large part from standardization of processes and procedures coupled with centralization of planning and decision making. Yet, in recent years, many already productive companies have further improved their productivity by giving individual employees greater influence in decision making and in how they do their work.
"Surprising" Phenomenon
How have many already productive companies further improved their productivity by implementing less centralized planning and decisionmaking, even though more centralization has been known to lead to huge increases in productivity?
Objective
The correct answer should suggest a difference between the already productive companies and the average company that could explain why the already productive companies can increase their productivity more through less centralization.
A
Most companies still try to improve productivity mainly through greater standardization and centralization of decision making.
What most companies do doesn’t explain why the already productive companies we’re concerned with in the stimulus can increase productivity through less centralization.
B
Increased productivity is not the only benefit of giving individual employees greater control over their work; job satisfaction increases as well.
This might provide another reason companies may want less centralization, but doesn’t help explain how companies can become more productive through les centralization.
C
Most of the increases in industrial productivity that have occurred in recent years have been due to the introduction of advanced technology like industrial robots.
Even if most increase in productivity has occurred through technology, we still know some companies have increased productivity through less centralization. This answer doesn’t explain how this happened.
D
The innovations of the Industrial Revolution are only now being applied in those companies in which individual employees have traditionally been entirely in control of how they do their work.
This answer tells us what’s happening in companies in which individual employees already have complete individual control. This doesn’t relate to the already productive companies we’re concerned with in the stimulus, which are giving their employees more and more control.
E
Increases in productivity in highly productive companies depend on management’s broad application of innovative ideas solicited from individual employees about their work.
Once a company is already highly productive, further productivity comes from individual employees’ ideas. This could be why less centralization (and greater autonomy for employees) is how already productive companies become more productive.
Professor: The most important function of epic poetry is to transmit the values by which a group of people is to live. This transmission is accomplished not by an explicit discussion of those values, but rather by their embodiment in heroic figures, who are presented as role models. Imitating those role models gives meaning and direction to the lives of those who hear the poems.
Summary
Epic poetry’s most important function is the transmission of the values by which a group of people is to live.
In epic poetry, values are not transmitted by explicit discussion.
In epic poetry, values are transmitted by their embodiment in heroic figures, who are presented as role models.
If people imitate the role models in epic poems, such people gain meaning and direction in their lives.
Notable Valid Inferences
Epic poetry accomplishes its most important function by embodying values in heroic figures, who are presented as role models.
A
An important function of poetry is to give meaning and direction to the lives of those who hear or read it.
Could be false. The stimulus only discusses one important function of poetry: the transmission of values. This might lead to people gaining life meaning and direction if they do decide to imitate the characters, but that’s not the explicit function as the stimulus describes it.
B
Epic poems accomplish their most important function by presenting heroic figures as role models.
Must be true. The stimulus explicitly states that the most important function of epic poems is to transmit values, and that the poems do so by presenting heroic figures as role models.
C
When values are represented in poetry, they are rarely if ever set forth explicitly.
Could be false. We know that epic poems do not transmit values via explicit discussion, but it’s possible that other kinds of poems do!
D
For many groups of people, heroic figures serve as role models embodying the values by which those people are to live.
Could be false. The stimulus does not say that many groups of people view heroic figures as role models; rather, it says that if a person does see a heroic figure as a role model and imitates that figure, that person could gain meaning and direction in their life.
E
Only epic poetry presents heroic figures as role models that, if imitated, give meaning and direction to the lives of those who hear it.
Could be false. The stimulus only discusses epic poetry. It does not claim that other kinds of poetry or art do not utilize the same techniques described here.
A
Only those people with Barrett’s esophagus can suffer an increased risk of developing cancer from heartburn.
B
An increase in the risk of esophageal cancer arises from cells similar to those in the stomach’s lining developing in the lower esophagus.
C
Unrelieved heartburn is not likely to cause esophageal cancer.
D
Some heartburn-medication advertisements imply that unrelieved heartburn is likely to cause esophageal cancer.
E
The dangers touted by heartburn-medication advertisements will affect relatively few of the people who see those advertisements.