Posted by congwei on August 04, 19102 at 05:25:14:
The following appeared in a newspaper article about law firms in the city of Megalopolis.
"In Megalopolis, the number of law school graduates who went to work for large, corporate firms declined by 15 percent over the last three years, whereas an increasing number of graduates took jobs at small, general practice firms. Even though large firms usually offer much higher salaries, law school graduates are choosing to work for the smaller firms most likely because they experience greater job satisfaction at smaller firms. In a survey of first-year students at a leading law school, most agreed with the statement that earning a high salary was less important to them than job satisfaction. This finding suggests that the large, corporate firms of Megalopolis will need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work."
In the argument, the author conclude the large corporate firms of Megalopolis need to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work. To support the conclusion, the author points out that the number of law school graduates to work for large firms declined while the number of graduates at small firms increased. In addition,he cites the results of a survey of the law school students,which suggested that earning a high salary was less important than job satisfaction.This argument suffers from several critical fallacies.
First,the author fairly assumes that the decline of the graduates number working in large firms accounts for that the firms fail to provide job satisfaction just like the small firms did. However, the author have no evidence to support that this is the case,nor does the author establish a cause relationship between them. It is highly possible that other factor might contribute to the change. For example,in common sence, compared with the small one, the large firms have more strict requirements which the employee should possess. If the graduates can not reach the standard, they won¡¯t be accepted as a employee. This problem may be easy to solve in small firm. It is also likely that the change just resulted from the plan of development in the large firms which in recent year don¡¯t need so many new recruit as the small ones. The argument is unconvincing because the author provides no evident to rule out such interpretation.
Second, the author¡¯s recommendation depends on the assumption that to offer graduates more benefits and incentives and reduce the number of hours they must work is the best way to improve the feeling of job satisfaction. What¡¯s the job satisfaction ? It include many important components such as the opportunity of promotion,the learning of new skills and the good work condition, besides benefits and work time. Indeed, that more and more graduates are willing to work at the small firms because of lacking job satisfaction in the large ones as the survey suggests. It is entirely possible that means other than only increasing incentive and reducing work hours would better solve the problem for the large firms.Perhaps the desired improvement could be achieved if the large firms take advantage of the advanced technology to give the graduates training lesson or just provide challenge case to the graduates. Without consideraing other alternative means of improvement, the author cannot confidently conclude that the large firms need adopt the recommendation.
To sum up, the conclusion lacks credibility because the evident cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the author maintains. To strength the argument,the author must provide clear evidence that the recommendation is both a necessary and sufficient means of achieving the desired results.To better evaluate the argument, the author would have to provide more evidence concerning that large firms are lack of job satisfaction which attribut to the decline.