[Argument Essay Review] Argument-2 第一次写请大家务必帮忙

michaelchenma

我感觉抄袭了原文太多，不知道大家意思如何？

2. 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 maintain better supervision of all employees.”

In this argument, the arguer concludes that for Apogee Company, closing down its field offices and consolidation of its operation locations would improve profitability. To support this conclusion, the arguer points out that when Apogee Company had all its operations in one location before, it was more profitable than it is today. In addition, the arguer reasons that the centralization would cut costs and help the company maintain better supervision of all employees in order to improve profitability. A careful examination of this argument would reveal how groundless it is.

First, the arguer fails to convince us that costs and supervision are the root causes of poor profitability. In other words, slashing costs and providing better supervision to all employees can indeed improve profitability. There are many factors that must be considered when calculating the profitability, such as business model, short-term and long-term strategies, and inventory turnover ratio. Just to name a few. Both cost and employee working efficiency are an integral part of company operational functionality, which is only one variable of the whole equation. Nevertheless, the arguer failed to provide any data or information on the other factors. If Apogee does not have a profitable strategy in the first place or is simply "in the wrong business at the wrong time", cutting costs and improve supervision could only marginally increase profits at best.

Second, the arguer made a questionable assumption that the old centralization of Apogee's operations model is still applicable to the Apogee today. A company that is not moving forward is a dead business. Being in business for many years, Apogee today might have evolved into a completely new company, a new Apogee that might implement very different business model compared with the old one. It is possible that old Apogee was primarily in a specific product support business in its preliminary form. Therefore, a call center is sufficient to conduct support business and can be fit under one roof. Nowadays, Apogee could have developed this product's peripheral components and is required to have its own sales team throughout the country. In this case, closing field offices is absolutely suicidal. The arguer failed to consider this possibility and argues that simply closing field offices will result in improving profit.

In conclusion, the arguer fails to justify the claims that cutting costs and more effectively supervising employees would improve profitability. To solidify the argument, the arguer should supply more concrete information on demonstrate that operation related factors, such as cost and employee supervision are the root causes of poor profitability. In addition, the arguer would have to prove the old business model conducted under centralized location is still applicable to today's Apogee.