The following appeared in a memorandum from the human resources department of Diversified Manufacturing:“Managers at our central office report that their employees tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding a vacation. To help countera

In this argument, the author asserts that limiting employees to a maximum of one week's continuous vacation time could enhance their productivity and raise the market share of company. The author’s argument appears to be well supported but a deeper examination would reveal that the conclusion is flawed by dubious assumptions and biased reasoning. In my opinion, however, the author’s statement is only a valid point on certain conditions. In this essay, I will present three of the biggest reasons why I think that this argument may be invalid.

In the first place, the argument suffers the problems of oversimplification. The arguer unfairly assumes that the fact that increasing productivity is due to the vacation that staff received. However, there is no sufficient evidence which can confirm this assumption. The speaker overlooks other factors that might also lead to enhance productivity of employees. As a matter of fact, the fact that increasing productivity might be explained by a variety of factors. Thus, lacking evidence to confirm this assumption, it is entirely possible that the reason why employees work hard before a vacation break is they yearn to finish their workload in order to take a wonderful rest in their vacations. In short, without considering and ruling out all of these and other possibilities, the credibility of the arguer’s conclusion is really open to doubt for the reason that each of the possibilities, if true, would serve to undermine the arguer’s conclusion. The author must consider and eliminate other possible reasons that may also lead to this result.

Secondly, the author claims that the market share has been declined due to non-productivity of the professional staff members. There may be some external reasons for the declining market share. For Example, new players would have entered the Manufacturing industry which could increase the competition and the margin of profit would have taken a hit.Non-productivity would have been down due to insufficient raw material, lack of orders and even high cost during certain period of time. Hence, the argument fails to prove the relationship between the declining market share and the productivity of the professional staff members.

Finally, there is no proper evidence supported by the argument that if more vacations breaks during the year which may increase the productivity. Further, by limiting the professional workers to one week vacation time, which may further depreciate the market share as there is a probability that which the workers may be on a vacation during the important period of manufacturing the products. For instance, Diwali which is the most celebrated festival in India, where the crackers are manufactured only before 2 or 3 months. If professional workers are on a vacation during this critical period of manufacturing, there is no question that the productivity would decrease at a substantial rate. Without answers to the above questions, one is left with impression that the claim is more of wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and therefore unconvincing. In order to assess the merits of a situation, it is essential to have a good knowledge of all contributing factors. Without enough information, the argument remains unsubstantial and open to debate.