2.APOGEE
“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 maintain better supervision of all employees.”
In this argument, the author concludes that the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its business from a single location. To support this conclusion, the author cites the fact that the company was more profitable in the past because it had all its operations in one location, thus improving profitability by cutting costs and make the company better manage its employees. At fist glance, the author’s recommendation appears to be appealing. However, a close examination will reveal how unconvincing it is for the following reasons.
First, the author commits a fallacy of “after this and therefore because of this”. The line of reasoning is that because the Apogee Company becomes less profitable after it establishes the field offices, the latter event is responsible for the former one. However, the fact that the poor profitability coincides with the decentralization of the company does not necessarily prove that the decentralization of the company caused its poor profitability. For example, it is possible that the competitors of Apogee Company are stronger than past or that the slowdown of the overall environment have caused the less profitability today. Therefore, unless other possible causal explanations have been considered and ruled out, this reasoning is fallacious.
Second, this argument relies on a groundless assumption that centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and streamlining supervision of employees. However, no evidence is stated in the argument to support this assumption. In fact, there is no guarantee that this is the case. The author ignores that centralization may increase the costs since its employees have to travel to and stay in different places in order to meet their customers. So this argument is unwarranted without ruling out such possibility.
Third, this argument commits a fallacy of “all things are equal”. The background conditions cannot remain unchanged, thus the situation in the past can be totally different from today. For example, the communication system is much more advanced today than 20 years ago and internet is widely used in business operation today. Many successful companies like BASF establish branches all over the world. Therefore, with the convenience brought by the internet, cell phones and other communication methods, the company can manage its field offices in different locations more easily than the past. Thus it is highly doubtful that ineffective management can be caused by conducting business in many locations.
In conclusion, the argument is weak because the author commits the above mentioned logical mistakes. To strengthen the argument, the author would have to analyze the present economic background and provide more precise evidence to prove that the company’s poor financial performance is due to its business operation in different locations.
几乎完全是套用七宗罪的模板,花了50分钟。这篇文章还比较好找错误,可是有的文章的错误根本用不到七宗罪,是不是就要自己写呢?
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