An Advertising Agency Must Leave Its Office Building.

Question: An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead costs, it is considering setting up a "virtual office" instead of moving to an adjacent office building. Employees will do their work on computers, as they do now, but will do so at home, sharing their work with colleagues by communicating text and designs to colleagues' computers through telephone lines, receiving typed comments, and then revising the work until it is satisfactory.

Which of the following, if true, indicates a disadvantage of the virtual office plan?

1. The agency can move its computers and associated equipment into employees' homes without purchasing any new equipment or requiring employees to purchase such equipment.
2. To reach the current office building and return home, employees spend an average of one and a half hours per day commuting, usually in heavy traffic.
3. The employees of the advertising agency are accustomed to autonomy in monitoring their own progress and productivity.
4. Employees would be able to adapt quickly to using computers in a virtual office setting since employees' current use of computers to produce designs requires a high level of skill.
5. Expressions and gestures in face-to-face exchanges are an important aid to employees in gauging the viability of new ideas they have proposed.

Answer: E

Explanation:

A GMAT Critical Reasoning section comprises some facts and arguments. GMAT critical reasoning tests the reasoning skills along with the candidate's logical and analytical thinking abilities. The candidate has to deduce the correct option by finding the logically correct argument.

The statement states - An advertising agency must leave its office building. To save overhead costs, it is considering setting up a "virtual office" instead of moving to an adjacent office building. Employees will do their work on computers, as they do now, but will do so at home, sharing their work with colleagues by communicating text and designs to colleagues' computers through telephone lines, receiving typed comments, and then revising the work until it is satisfactory.

Which of the following, if true, indicates a disadvantage of the virtual office plan?

1. We need an option that weakens the success of the proposal but this argument strengthens it. This is not the correct option.
2. This argument also strengthens the argument. Employees would save time and could work longer.
3. The passage has no mention or reason to believe that they won't have autonomy.
4. This argument strengthens the case that the change will be successfully implemented. Hence the wrong answer.
5. Correct. Without physically being around, employees won't be able to get face-to-face contact and won't be able to gauge expressions and gestures.

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