In a bureaucracy, all decisions are arrived at by a process that involves many people. There is no one person who has...

shunhe on August 7, 2020

Hi @ankita96,

Thanks for the question! So let’s go over this stimulus. We’re told that in bureaucracies, all decisions are arrived at by processes that have many people. No one person gets to decide. Thus, the argument concludes, in bureaucracies, risky projects are never undertaken.

Now we’re asked for something that’ll make the conclusion follow logically from the premises if assumed; in other words, this is a strengthen with sufficient premise question. And we should note immediately that there seems to be a gap in the argument. We somehow go from talking about number of people and making decisions to the idea of “risky projects.” So we’re going to need to assume something that links the concept of “risky projects” to the premises to get us to the correct answer choice, so that’s something to keep an eye out for. Specifically, it seems like the author’s saying the risky decisions aren’t taken because the decisions involve multiple people.

Now (C) tells us that an individual who has decision-making power will take risks. Does this make the conclusion follow? Remember, the conclusion is about risky projects never being undertaken in bureaucracies, where all decisions are arrived at by a process that involves many people, not just one person. So (C) doesn’t actually apply to this argument, and so doesn’t help us get to our conclusion.

Now take a look at (D), which tells us that the only risky projects undertaken are those for which a single individual has decision-making power. Diagramming this, we get

Risky project undertaken —> Single individual has decision-making power

And the contrapositive is

~Single individual has decision-making power —> ~Risky project undertaken

And that helps us get to our conclusion! In bureaucracies, it’s not the case that single individuals have decision-making power. So then if we assume (D), we can conclude that risky projects aren’t undertaken in bureaucracies.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.