The following appeared in a memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company:
When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today. Therefore, the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. Such centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and helping the company maintains better supervision of all employees.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument states that Apogee Company must close down its field offices and conduct all its operation from a single location to improve profitability and maintain better supervision of all employees. This argument may seem convincing but it is seriously flawed due to several assumptions based on the premise of the argument.
Firstly the argument assumes that operating a company from one location leads to more profitability by cutting costs and helps a company to have better supervision of all employees. While this may be true for small business firms but it will seriously impact the local clients and their business of the Apogee Company at their field regions. The author does not state the exact reason for less profitability of the Apogee Company. It may be due to recession or workers strike or may be unforeseen events such as floods, earthquake that may lead to increase in the operation cost of the business and thereby reducing the profit. There can be other reasons for increase in operation costs such as the launch of new product in the foreign market whose sales has not just started yet or market research, surveys. Different markets in different parts of the world has different behaviour based on the culture, religion and economic conditions. Certainly
The second issue in the argument lies in the cost-benefit analysis. The business department has failed to explicitly mention that whether proper pros and cons were considered in the cost sheet. Initially, the cost benefit may seem to be high. Local field offices would have been much effective in handling local customers and vendors. If centralization of the company is adopted, then the employers have to travel for longer distances for business meetings, for providing services to the customers or for inspection at manufacturer’s works .Certainly, the cost will be higher and thus minimizing the profits as expected initially. The business development’s premises, the basis for their argument, lack any legitimate evidentiary support and render their conclusion as unacceptable.
In sum, the argument is not compelling because it omitted many other factors that must be addressed to make proper conclusion. If the business development truly hopes to change its readers’ mind on the issue, they would have to largely restructure their argument, fix the flaws in their logic, clearly explicate their assumptions, and provide evidentiary support. Without, all these things, their poorly reasoned argument will likely convince few people.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-02-26 | tushar.borad123 | 74 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Minimum 3 arguments wanted.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 400 350
No. of Characters: 2080 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.472 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.2 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.736 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.222 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.809 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.305 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.484 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.065 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 949, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...igion and economic conditions. Certainly The second issue in the argument lies in...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 545, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
... inspection at manufacturer's works .Certainly, the cost will be higher and t...
^^
Line 5, column 547, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: Certainly
...nspection at manufacturer's works .Certainly, the cost will be higher and thus minim...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, may, second, so, then, thus, while, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2144.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 400.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.36 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.472135955 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93843070362 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.54 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 664.2 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.1993669234 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.117647059 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5294117647 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.206339867786 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0665819839341 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0947986326687 0.0701772020484 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.13752467179 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0923657355011 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.28 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.