Manufacturing:“Managers at our central office report that their employees tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding a vacation. To help counteract our declining market share, we could increase the productivity of our professional staff

In order to increase the productivity of professional staff members the author recommends to limiting the vacations ,which is four weeks per year, to a maximum of one week's continuous vacation time. To support this assertion the author states that Employees tend to be more productive in the days immediately preceding vacations . The argument is full of flaws and is open to a lot of questions since it provides meager assertions and dubious assumptions.

first the author believes in the Managers report which states that employees tend to be most productive in the days immediately preceding vacation. the accuracy of the claim is questionable since it might be that selected employees are not the representative of all the employees.It could be that employees which are not under scanner might not show the same result. To strengthened the argument the author should have conducted survey covering all the employees.

Second the author failed to take into account the employees performance after coming from vacations. It might be that employees fell tired and less interested to work,causing decrease in productivity. If so then by limiting the continuous vacation time will worsen the situation. the author should have provided information about the performance of the employees after coming from the vacation.

Third, the author concludes that limiting the continuous vacation time will cause more vacation breaks during a year and give more days of maximum productivity. this is flawed and unsupported claim as the author failed to answer many important questions such as will the employees perceive the change positively? if so then what is the surety that they will work harder in days preceding each vacation as the vacation has increased? will they work with maximum productivity after coming from vacation?. As the author failed to answer many questions one is left with the claim that it is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidences. So the argument has no legs to stand on.

Because the author left out key issues it is not sound or persuasive . The argument is full of assumptions where author has assumed a lot of unsubstantiated evidences. had the author included above mentioned points into view the argument would have been incontrovertible.