GMAT ISSUE类作文范文-66

Topic:

Manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that their products are safe. If a product injures someone for whatever reason, the manufacturer should be held legally and financially accountable for the injury.

Instructions:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Sample Essay

In determining whether manufacturers should be accountable for all injuries resulting from the use of their products, one must weigh the interests of consumers against those of manufacturers. On balance, holding manufacturers strictly liable for such injuries is unjustifiable.

Admittedly, protecting consumers from defective and dangerous products is an important and worthwhile goal. No doubt nearly all of us would agree that health and safety should rank highly as an objective of public policy. Also, compelling a high level of safety forces manufacturers to become more innovative in design, use of materials, and so forth. Consumers and manufacturers alike benefit, of course, from innovation.

However, the arguments against a strict-liability standard are more compelling. First, the standard is costly. It forces-manufacturers to incur undue expenses for overbuilding, excessive safety testing, and defending liability law suits. Consumers are then damaged by ultimately bearing these costs in the form of higher prices. Second, the standard can be unfair. It can assign fault to the wrong party; where a product is distributed through a wholesaler and/or retailer, one of these parties may have actually caused, or at least contributed to, the injury. The standard can also misplace fault where the injured party is not the original consumer. Manufacturers cannot ensure that second-hand users receive safe products or adequate "instructions and warnings. Finally, where the injured consumer uses the product for a purpose or in a manner other than the intended one, or where there were patent dangers that the user should have been aware of, it seems the user. not the manufacturer, should assume the risk of injury.

In sum, despite compelling interests in consumer safety and product innovation, holding manufacturers accountable for all injuries caused by their products is unjustifiably costly to society and unfair to manufacturers.

 

GMAT ISSUE类作文范文-67

Topic:

Work greatly influences people's personal lives - their special interests, their leisure activities, even their appearance away from the workplace.

Instructions:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point; view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Sample Essay

The speaker claims that our jobs greatly influence our personal interests, recreational activities and even appearance. While I agree that the personal lives of some people are largely determined by their work, in my view it would be a mistake to draw this conclusion generally. In my observation, the extent to which occupation influences personal life depends on (1) the nature of the work, and (2) how central the work is to one's sense of self.

On the one hand, consider my friends Steve and William. Steve works as a gardener, but after work he creates oil paintings of quality and poignancy. His leisure time is spent alternately at the sea, in the wilderness, and in dark cafes. William paints houses for a living, but on his own time he collects fine art and books in first edition, as well as reading voraciously in the area of American history. Their outside activities and appearance speak little about what Steve or William do for a living, because these men view their jobs as little more than a means of subsidizing me activities that manifest their true selves. At the same time, they have chosen jobs that need not spill over into their personal lives, so the nature of their jobs permits them to maintain a distinctive identity apart from their work.

On the other hand, consider my friend Shana—a business executive who lives and breathes her work. After work hours you can invariably find her at a restaurant or bar with colleagues, discussing work. Shana's wardrobe is primarily red—right off the dress-for-success page of a woman's magazine. For Shana, her job is clearly an expression of her self-concept. Also, by its nature it demands Shana's attention and time away from the workplace.

What has determined the influence of work on personal lives in these cases is the extent to which each person sees himself or herself in terms of work. Clearly, work is at the center of Shana's life, but not of either Steve's or William's. My sample is small; still, common sense and intuition tell me that the influence of work on one's personal life depends both on the nature of the work and on the extent to which the work serves as a manifestation of one's self-concept.

 

GMAT ISSUE类作文范文-68

Topic:

Since the physical work environment affects employee productivity and morale, the employees themselves should have the right to decide how their workplace is designed.

Instructions:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Sample Essay

I agree that physical workspace can affect morale and productivity and that. as a result, employees should have a significant voice in how their work areas are designed. However, the speaker suggests that each employee should have full autonomy over his or her immediate workspace, i think this view is too extreme, for it ignores two important problems that allowing too much freedom over workspace can create.

On the one hand. I agree that some aspects of workspace design are best left to the individual preferences of each worker. Location of personal tools and materials, style and size of desk chair, and even desk lighting and decorative desk items, can each play an important role in a worker's comfort, psychological well-being, concentration, and efficiency. Moreover, these features involve highly subjective preferences, so it would be inappropriate for anyone but the worker to make such choices.

On the other hand. control over one's immediate workspace should not go unchecked, for two reasons. First, one employee's workspace design may inconvenience, annoy, or even offend nearby coworkers. For example, pornographic pinups may distract some coworkers and offend others, thereby impeding productivity, fostering ill-will and resentment, and increasing attrition—all to the detriment of the company. Admittedly, the consequences of most workspace choices would not be so tar-reaching Still, in my observation many people adhere, consciously or not, to the adage that one person's rights extend only so far as the next person's nose (or ears. or eyes). A second problem with affording too much workspace autonomy occurs when workspaces are not clearly delineated—by walls and doors—or when workers share an immediate workspace. In such cases, giving all workers concurrent authority would perpetuate conflict and undermine productivity.

In conclusion, although employees should have the freedom to arrange their work areas, this freedom is not absolute. Managers would be well-advised to arbitrate workspace disputes and, if needed, assume authority to make final decisions about workspace design.

 

GMAT ISSUE类作文范文-69

Topic:

The most important quality in an employee is not specific knowledge or technical competence. Instead it is the ability to work well with other employees.

Instructions:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Sample Essay

Whether the ability to work with others is more important than specific knowledge and technical competence depends on the specific job as well as the complexity of the job's technical aspects. In general, however, social skills are more critical than technical competence to the ultimate success of an organizational unit.

Admittedly, some level of technical competence and specific knowledge is needed to perform any job. Without some knowledge of the systems, procedures, and vocabulary used in one's department or division, an employee cannot communicate effectively with peers or contribute meaningfully to team goals. By the same token, however, nearly every job—even those in which technical ability would seem to be of paramount importance—calls for some skill in working with other employees. Computer programmers, for example, work in teams to develop products according to agreed-upon specifications and timelines. Scientists and researchers must collaborate to establish common goals and to coordinate efforts. Even teachers, who are autonomous in the classroom, must serve on committees and coordinate activities with administrators and other teachers.

Moreover, employees can generally learn technical skills and gain specific knowledge through on-the-job training and continuing education (depending on the complexity of the skills involved). Social skills, on the other hand, are more innate and not easily learned. They are, therefore, requisite skills that employees must possess at the outset if the organizational unit is to succeed.

In sum, specific knowledge does admittedly play a more critical role than social skills in some highly-technical jobs: nevertheless, the ability to work well with other employees is ultimately more important, since all jobs require this ability and since it is more difficult, to learn social skills on the job.

 

GMAT ISSUE类作文范文-70

Topic:

So long as no laws are broken, there is nothing unethical about doing whatever you need to do to promote existing products or to create new products.

Instructions:

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations or reading.

Sample Essay

The speaker asserts that in creating and marketing products, companies act ethically merely by not violating any laws. Although the speaker's position is not wholly insupportable, far more compelling arguments can be made for holding businesses to higher ethical standards than those required by the letter of the law.

On the one hand, two colorable arguments can be made for holding business only to legal standards of conduct. First, imposing a higher ethical duty can actual harm consumers in the long term. Compliance with high ethical standards can be costly for business, thereby lowering profits and, in turn, impeding a company's ability to create jobs (for consumers), keep prices low (for consumers), and so forth. Second, limited accountability is consistent with the "buyer beware" principle that permeates our laws of contracts and torts, as well as our notion in civil procedure that plaintiffs carry the burden or proving damage. In other words, the onus should be on consumers to protect themselves, not on companies to protect consumers.

On the other hand. several convincing arguments can be made for holding business to a higher ethical standard. First, in many cases government regulations that protect consumers lag behind advances in technology. A new marketing technique made possible by. internet technology may be unethical but nevertheless might not be proscribed by the letter of the laws which predated the Internet. Second, enforceability might not extend beyond geographic borders. Consider, for example, the case of "dumping." When products fail to comply with U.S. regulations, American companies frequently market—or "dump"—such products in third-world countries where consumer-protection laws are virtually nonexistent. Third, moral principles form the basis of government regulation and are, therefore, more fundamental than the law.

In the final analysis, white overburdening businesses with obligations to consumers may not be a good idea in the extreme, our regulatory system is not as effective as it should be. Therefore, businesses should adhere to a higher standard of ethics in creating and marketing products than what is required by the letter of the law.

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