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Argument 69 题目: The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation. ======================================================================================= 时间 30 字数 486 =======================================================================================
The author of this memo suggests that thecompany should use Zeta rather than Alpha to build their new buildings. Heprovides evidence such as the comparison of expenses for maintenance last year,energy consumption and mobility of the two construction companies. Thereasoning process seems good, but there are many flaws in the memo, which willarouse quite a lot of questions. In the first place, the author says thatthe building which is built by Zeta cost half of the maintaining expenses thanAlpha's. Some questions can be asked by readers. Do the expenses of maintenancemake sense? Can these expenses prove the quality of buildings built by Zeta isbetter than that of Alpha? There is a big chance that the building which wasbuilt by Alpha is used much more than Zeta's. As we know, this company is alarge, highly diversified company. Zeta's building may be used for just storingsome goods while Alpha's are used for meetings, which leads to a high mobilityof people. In this way, the author's reasoning process can be weakened a lotfor its lack of comparability. To make the argument more convincing, the authorhas to provide more evidence showing the functions of those two buildings arethe same. Additionally, the author asserts that Zetais better than Alpha since it has less employee turnover. But why the turnoverof employees indicates the quality of the buildings it builds? Those two thingsare not connected with each other and they are neither the sufficient conditionnor the necessary condition to the other. In one certain extent, high mobilityof a company represents for the revitalization and improving progress of acompany, especially for construction companies. The author makes the argumentunconvincing and even dissuasive from this point. Finally, even though the less expenses ofmaintenance and the less mobility of Zeta count in the whole argument, lack ofinformation of other construction companies makes the reasoning progresstenuous. There is a high probability that there is another constructioncompany, called Beta company, can construct buildings far better than both Zetaand Alpha. If this happens, this argument should definitely choose Beta withouthesitation. To make this memo more persuasive, the vice president has to showus the fact that no such Beta companies, which are better than Alpha and Zetaconstruction company, exists or provide evidence the reason for not using thoseBeta companies. To sum up, the vice president's argument isseemingly fine, but some questions can be asked by readers which can weaken thecogent process of this memo. The author has to provide far more evidence toconvince us the impossibility of the specific situations to make the argumentpersuasive enough to choose Zeta. Only in this way can this diversified companychoose Zeta rather than Alpha and even other construction companies and makemore profits and fulfill a bright future. |
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