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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.
提纲：
1、ten years ago；30%不明确
2、两地maintenance and energy cost of building 有可比性，无其他影响因素？
3、stable workforce 不一定是好事
4、无其他选择？
字数：574
In this argument, the vice president recommends Zeta (Z) for the new building project due to its high quality of construction and employees. To support that, he or she makes a comparison between A (Alpha) and Z on the cost of building, maintenance, energy using, and the stability of employees. These evidences the vice president cites to strengthen the argument seems pretty convincing at the first glance. However, after deeper scrutiny, it turns out to be rife with fallacies.
To begin with, the data arguer use was collected ten years ago. It is dubious. A question should be asked is that nothing has changed in the two companies during ten years? Ten years is quite a long time. The quality and expenses of their construction now can be totally different from that was ten years ago, influenced by the unpredictable economy trend. Even if these two crucial factors stay static, the answer to the question whether they will keep the same until the new building built is still uncertain, since the accurate building date is vague. Besides, how much is the 30 percent approximately? Will it cover the whole consumption A spends on maintenance and energy? Perhaps A costs far more than Z to build that new building, even make the board cast doubts on the whole building issue. We just don not know.
What’s more, the arguer tries to emphasis Z’s high-level construction by comparing the maintenance and energy cost of these two buildings. However, these expenses can really reflect their construction quality? Is it reasonable to compare buildings in two distinct regions?The argument overlooks other potential factors such as climate, terrain. Maybe the climate in the Z region (the region where Z company’s building stands) is comfortable; residents there do not need to use air-conductor or heating all year round, while things in A region are totally the opposite. Or perhaps, steep and complicate terrain in A region renders the maintenance of building taxing. And hurricanes frequent A region in the summer, making the maintenance work even harder.
Furthermore, the arguer mentions the stability of A in order to demonstrate its stable workforce and ordered management. Nevertheless, another question is on the way. Can little turnover in employees indicates the quality of a company? Will it lead backward effects? Or does the positive side overweigh the negative part? This kind of management will possibly lead to laziness and irresponsibility of employees, since they do not need to worry about being fired even though have made huge mistakes. Viewed in this way, whether the stability of employees an advantage is still in doubt, unless more detailed information and sound evidence offered.
Last but not the least, it is pretty nature for us to question the necessity to adopt A, concerning no evidence involving another company is given. Actually, the arguer creates a ‘false dilemma’ here, based on the assumption that there is no other reliable construction company can be chosen. Unfortunately, it is hasty to draw this conclusion without careful analysis.
To sum up, the argument fails to persuade us adopting Z for the new building project, for the evidences arguer cited do not lend valid support to his or her recommendation. In order to make it logically acceptable, the arguer is required to provide more updated data about the overall expenses and comprehensive information related to the regional environment, inside management. Yet, other alternatives also need to be taken into consideration.
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发表于 2012-5-17 16:33:48
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