The question:

The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.

"A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night."

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

My essay:

The given argument talks about association between avererage sleeping hours of the advertising executives and the success of the firm in which they work solely based on a survey of 300 male and female employees. This argument contains abundant loopholes and is definitely not sufficient to infer that the firm should hire people who need less than 6 hours of sleep at night. If applied, not only would this move be based on incomplete data, but would also draw a lot of criticism, as it would be seen as obviating an optimum work-life balance.

Firstly, the survey only includes advertising executives, while the author applies the survey findings to all employees of all businesses in general. What if this survey gives different results for programmer analysts or production managers? It is not logical to imply that if successful advertising executives sleep less, other employees must do so as well due to difference in nature of work for every employee. Further, the survey does not include a comparison of qualifications,manager ratings or the the value of employees in terms of the contribution of their work to the company. For example, in India, IT firms such as Cognizant, Infosys, etc employees who work in growing technologies have higher growth rate than those who do not. Preference for onsite opportunities are often given to long-term employees as benefit of their loyalty, which is one of the key factors for higher growth.

Secondly, it is worth mentioning that according to many studies, an average individual requires 6-8 hours of sleep for optimum cognitive functionality and overall health. This is in contradiction to the author's assumption, especially for long-term benefits to the firm. For instance, the recent demise of the SAP India CEO has been directly linked to over-exhaustion due to his inadequate sleep pattern(he slept for 4 hours only). Enforcing your employees to sleep less would not send a direct message that the firm does not associate with a balanced lifestyle, which could also debase the firm's public image in today's employee-centric culture.

In conclusion, due to an incomplete survey, the author's inference to hire people who sleep less is based on an incomplete data and does not deal with alternative reasons for such an outcome. It also sends out a wrong message to its probable employees. Hence, more surveys and a comprehensive research is required to truly understand the basis on which employees should be hired to promote the growth of company's business.

PS- Kindly review the second point specifically, regarding the mention of "many studies" and mentioning SAP CEO and not his name(couldn't remember). Would it cause a deduction of marks for not mentioning any specific source or the name of the CEO or is it okay? Also, does it look like I'm offering an opinion by remarking on the apparent "public image" of the company? Or is it okay to do so. Please help me out with this. Thanks in advance