PT157 · S2 · Q24 The more profitable a corporation

The argument is about what highly profitable corporations could do to save money, not about what corporations currently do. Whether many or few corporations already use effective bonuses does not affect whether the strategy would work if implemented. If you were trying to convince a room that "People can lose weight by exercising more and eating less", you don't need to assume that almost no one is currently doing that. Even if most people are already doing that, your position is still valid.

This feels tempting since all parts of the answer match up with stuff we said in the argument. However, we never want to see, "If [conclusion]". If we're going to pick a conditional answer choice, it should flow from evidence to conclusion, not start from the conclusion. Suppose we said, "Brad has a great physique. Thus he's attractive." We aren't assuming, "If someone is attractive, it's because they have a great physique." The original argument was acting like a great physique would be sufficient to be attractive, but that assumption is acting like a great physique is necessary to be attractive. This answer is doing the same thing. Our author is assuming that, "if expensive bonuses would reduce the time mgrs spend monitoring employees, then a highly profitable corp could save money by giving expensive bonuses".

These Volume Dial expressions are incredibly strong. The author doesn't need there to be a permanent connection between value of managers time and likelihood of managers' spending time monitoring employees. Like (A), this is an answer about what corporations are currently doing, whereas the argument is about a hypothetical plan of action. The author is trying to scheme a way where managers whose time is valuable can spend less time monitoring employees. She doesn't need to assume that's already happening. In fact, if it were already happening, it would kind of weaken. At highly profitable corporations (where managers' time is most valuable), this suggests monitoring is already minimal. If monitoring is already low, there is little monitoring to reduce, which means less potential savings from the bonus strategy.

This answer makes the author's suggested Plan sound like a Required Solution. The conclusion is saying "they can save money by giving expensive bonuses", not "in order to save money they must give expensive bonuses". The argument does not need to assume bonuses are the exclusive solution; it only needs to assume they are an effective one. If other solutions also work, that doesn't weaken the idea that this Plan would work.