A manager cannot extract the best performance from employees by threatening them with termination or offering financi...

Skylar on October 27, 2019

@Ryan-Mahabir Happy to help!

(C) states that "in some cases one's effectiveness in a particular role can be enhanced by a partial relinquishing of control." This supports the passage's concept of managers extracting the best performance by delegating responsibility to employees, especially in cases of decisions previously made by the manager. Therefore, managers must relinquish control by delegating their decisions to employees in order to be most effective in achieving the best performance. So (C) is illustrated by the passage and correct.

(E) states "business works best by harnessing the self-interest of individuals to benefit the company as a whole." The tactics of "threatening them [employees] with termination or offering financial rewards for high productivity" are examples of attempting to harness self-interest to benefit the company that the passage explicitly states "CANNOT extract the best performance." Therefore, (E) is not supported in the passage and is incorrect.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!

tomgbean on December 4, 2019

How were we to distinguish between extracting the best performance from employees vs. extracting the best performance from managers in their goals of extracting the best performance from employees. I was confused. I thought we were talking about employees, not managers. C seems to say that relinquishing power makes managers more effective, not employees.

Skylar on December 8, 2019

@tomgbean, happy to help!

Managers aim to extract the best performance from their employees. Therefore, managers are successful when their employees are also successful. If employees fail to perform their best, then the managers have also failed in getting them to perform their best. These goals align, so there is no need to make a big distinction between the two.

You are correct that (C) is referring to the effectiveness of managers rather than employees, but since the role of managers is discussed clearly in the passage, this is okay. We are only asked to identify a proposition that is illustrated by the situation in the passage, so the correct answer could be about anything that is supported by the passage, including manager-related concepts. The correct answer does not necessarily need to be specifically about employees.

Does that make sense? Please reach out with any other questions and best of luck with your studies!