LSAT 157 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q24

LR Question 24 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The more profitable a corporation is, the more valuable its …

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Highly profitable companies can save money by giving employees expensive bonuses.

REASONING: At highly profitable corporations, managers’ time is more valuable. If those managers are monitoring employees, it can be costly. A corporation can reduce the necessity for monitoring by incentivizing employees to keep working hard.

ANALYSIS: The author wants corporations to save money by giving expensive bonuses. This sounds a bit counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Whatever benefit the corporation gets might be offset by the cost of the bonuses. The argument will only work if the benefit (ie. the savings in manager time) is larger than the cost of the employee bonuses, and this is only true if the bonuses are sufficiently incentivizing the workers.

Remember that for Necessary Assumption questions, you can use the negation trick. If you negate the answer choice and it doesn’t impact the argument, it wasn’t necessary. The correct answer will destroy the conclusion if negated.

___________

1. This answer is incorrect and not relevant. Even if many corporations give employees bonuses that effectively incentivize them to work hard, it doesn’t impact the argument.
2. The author isn’t saying that employee bonuses only save money by incentivizing workers. They’re just saying that it incentivizes workers.
3. The argument doesn’t need this, nor does the negation trick indicate this as the right answer.
   Negation: corporations with more valuable manager time are more likely to have those managers supervising employees.
4. CORRECT. If expensive bonuses were not strong incentives, the bonuses would not accomplish what the author suggests they will.
5. This answer is saying that the only way to save money when reducing manager monitoring of employees is to give expensive bonuses. This isn’t true or necessary. The author isn’t saying that bonuses are the only way to provide strong incentives to employees, only that the incentives work.

Recap: The question begins with “The more profitable a corporation is, the more valuable its “. It is a Necessary Assumption question. Learn more about LSAT Necessary questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.