1 comments :

At 15 August 2009 at 13:41 Ramit said...

Profitability & Efficiency has always been the focus of businesses all over the world. Apogee Company is no different. The ways to achieve is different, there are those who prefer to increase profit by giving stringent timelines to employees to deliver, those who look at changing business strategies that will enhance profits while maintaining employee’s work-life balance, those who improve profitability by cutting costs. In the preceding statement, the author claims that profitability of Apogee Company will improve by closing down field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. Though his claims may well have merit, the author presents a poorly reasoned argument based on several questionable premises and assumptions, and based solely on the evidence the author offers, we cannot accept his argument as valid.

The primary issue with the author’s reasoning lies in his unsubstantiated premises. There can be various reasons the company is not as profitable as it was earlier. The author has not mentioned since how long these new field offices are operational, the performance of each individual office over last 5-6 months. It could be possible that some of the field offices may not be profitable, but not necessarily all. The author’s premises, the basis of his argument, lack any legitimate evidentiary support and render his conclusion unacceptable.

In addition, the assumption that profitability would increase by closing down all field offices and conducting operations from a single location is unproven. What id the single location is profitable today but due to change in public demand in that location the profitability is lost? What would happen if the single location is destroyed due to natural calamity? The author weakens his argument by making assumptions and failing to provide justification of his assumptions.

While the author does have some key issues in his premise and assumption, that is not to say that the entire argument is without base. The argument would have been better if the author would have provided some more details like, the performance of each field office since the time it was established, if any field office is not profitable is there a chance of it becoming profitable in the near future, is the cost of supporting such field office feasible till the time it becomes profitable. After analyzing these points the decision of closing a field office would have been said to be a wise decision. Though there are several issues with the author’s reasoning at present, with research and clarification, he could improve his argument significantly.

In sum, the author’s illogical argument is based on unsupported premises and unsubstantiated assumptions that render his conclusion invalid. It is possible that conducting field operations from a single location may not always be profitable. It is required to analyze various factors as mentioned in the paragraphs above to judge the profitability of business. If the author truly hopes to change his readers’ minds on the issue, he would have to largely restructure his argument, fix the flaws in his logic, clearly explicate his assumptions, and provide evidentiary support. Without these things, his poorly reasoned argument will likely convince few people.

 

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