Answer: "Employees must request materials, time, or funds."
Step-by-step explanation:
The author's point in this passage is in support of the "authoritarian leadership", where strict rules and obedience are used as power at the expense of personal freedom. To find the answer to this question, I went through all of the sentences, to find in the end what was the WEAKEST sentence.
The first sentence is: "Authoritarian approaches have been the norm for many years."
It's telling us that this approach that the author is suggesting has been the standard or common approach for many years. If we look at the context of this sentence, before it the text states - "One need only to look to the past to find proof that workplaces with authoritarian leaders are successful."
So this is suggesting that "Authoritarian approaches have been the norm for many years" is a good thing, and is in support of the author's argument.
The second option is: "Employees must request materials, time, or funds."
This is a very vague sentence, that we cannot understand unless we look at the context again.
"By exerting absolute control over company resources, an authoritarian leader can reduce wastefulness. Employees must request materials, time, or funds. The leader can then decide on-- and provide-- the appropriate level of resources for the job."
So we can now see that the general point of this paragraph is that authoritarian leadership means more control over funds and resources, and therefore is in support of the author's argument. However, the question asks which sentence provides the weakest support for the author's argument, and therefore is not referring to the context of the given sentence options. So, we can tell that this is so far our weakest sentence.
The third sentence is as follows: "Getting input from dozens of employees could take hours, and some suggestions will likely be impractical."
So here the author refers to the authoritarian leader making the decisions themselves, rather than using the input of employees' decisions, and wasting time. We can say that this sentence is enhancing and strengthening the author's main argument. The sentence is subtly comparing employees making an input decision against an authoritarian leader making a decision, supporting the authoritarian leadership.
The final option says: "In this way, a team is not using five hundred dollars' worth of materials when they could actually make do with much less."
The part I have underlined is referring to when the author stated authoritarian leaders making a decision was better for reducing wastefulness (by deciding the appropriate level of resources that employees requested).
This sentence is also in support of the author's argument, by (again) comparing the author's idea, with the "worse" alternative.
In this case, it's the
Author's idea: Authoritarian leader can supervise and decide an appropriate level of resources for the job, to save "hundreds of dollars' worth of materials, when they could actually make do with much less."
Alternative: The opposite - Employees making their own decisions (not good), therefore wasting hundreds of dollars.
We can see how this sentence strongly supports the author's argument.
Finally, after going through all the factors in each sentence that affect its "support strength", I think it's now much easier for you to figure out which sentence provides the "WEAKEST support for the author's argument".
ANSWER: "Employees must request materials, time, or funds."
- Xenia :))