AWA

王肖

The following appeared in a memorandum fromthe information technology department of a major advertising firm:

“The moreefficient a firm’s employees are, the more profitable that firm will be.  Improvements in a firm’s informationtechnology hardware and software are a proven way to increase the efficiency ofemployees who do the majority of their work on computers.  Therefore, if our firm invests in the mostpowerful and advanced information technology available, employee productivitywill be maximized.  This strategy ensuresthat every dollar spent on enhanced information technology will help toincrease our firm’s profitmargins.”

Discuss how well reasoned . . .etc.

文：

As mentioned in the argument, the authorconcludes that the company should invest as much as possible to powerful and usefulinformation technology to maximize the employee productivity and to increasethe firm’s profits, because information efficiency is significant for workerswho use computer. Although the conclusion appear to be somewhat convincing, butit also has some concerns that must be addressed to substantiate the argument.We can identify several logical flaws to question the argument.

To begin with, the author assumes that improvinginformation technology could enhance the efficiency of workers. However，not all employees in the companyuse computer to do majority of their work. Therefore, the employees who hardlyuse or never use computers may not benefit from the improvement of the informationtechnology available. In addition，if the workers who work via the computer frequently do not takeadvance of the improved technology, they also cannot increase their workingefficiency.

Second, even if the improved technologycould enhance workers’ efficiency, the profits earned by the company is notonly influenced by workers but also some other factors. For example, theoverall sales is an extremely important factor to company. If the company havehigh working efficiency but low sales, it can still suffer a great decrease inprofits.

Third, the author make a false assumption thatevery dollar invested will work. In fact, some money may be spent on theinformation technology that will never be used by the workers in the company. Thusthis part of money will be completely useless.

Given insufficient data to the problemabove, the argument is not as convincing as it stands. To resolve theseproblems, the author should provide information about workers’ type and otherfactors that influence the profits or so.  

求大神修改意见！