GMAT Essays (AWA)

Argument
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The following appeared as part of an article in a magazine on lifestyles.

"Two years ago, City L was listed 14th in an annual survey that ranks cities according to the quality of life that can be enjoyed by those living in them. This information will enable people who are moving to the state in which City L is located to confidently identify one place, at least, where schools are good, housing is affordable, people are friendly, the environment is safe, and the arts flourish."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The author argues that survey ranking will enable people to confidently identify one place where schools are good, housing is affordable, people are friendly, the environment is safe and the arts flourish. Although the author's argument has some merits, it has failed to consider many other aspects such as establising that survey findings are valid, establishing that parameters about which the conclusion has been drawn are really the parameters considered in survey for quality of life.

Firstly, The author assumes that quality of life as considered in survey includes good schools, affordable housing, and friendly people, the safe environment etc however it has not been mentioned explicitly. Although the author's assumption might be valid, he has not provided sufficient data to confirm that.

Second, The argument assumes that two year old survey findings are still valid. The author mentions that people who are moving to state will be able to identify at least one good place. It is entirely possible that city L quality of life might have gone down after the survey.

Lastly, The author has not provided information about the sample of the survey. We don't know whether sample was representative. We are also not sure whether survey was national level survey, world level survey or state level survey and it makes a big difference if city L is ranked 14th in world or 14th in state.

In summary, to bolster the argument, the author must provide additional details about the survey. He should provide parameters for ranking to prove that survey and conclusion considered same factors. He should provide details about sample of the survey to showcase that sample was representative and 14th rank is in fact a good rank. In addition, author should support his argument with recent findings rather than with 2 year old survey. Alternatively he can give data to support that two year is small period and will not have any significant impact on the ranking.
 
Issue
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"The presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company. Competition forces a company to change itself in ways that improve its practices."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
The opinion of the presence of a competitor is always beneficial to a company is an interesting one. While I agree that comptetion can cause some short term disruption for the company, I think presence of competitors is beneficial in long term. Competition forces companies to change non-value adding activies to activities that generate value.


In current world, competition is the key to success. Many of the countries are opening up their economy and are allowing their companies to compete at global level. For example, when India pursued it's liberalization reforms in 1990's, many of the Indian companies were suffering from poor practices.

Consider a case of India's largest automobile company (7th largest in the world) Tata Motors. It had one third employee productivity as compared to it's peers in the world. Before liberalization there was no real motivation for the company to change it's practices and to become more competitive. Although there was some domestic competition from Ashok Leyland, it was still insufficient to cause any significant improvement.

Once Indian goverment planned to open up the economy, Tata Motors realized the need to change and started looking at drastic steps to be competitive. There were numerous steps undertaken such as offering Voluntary retirement scheme to employees, improved focus on quality, and infact to fire non-performing employees etc. Firing in India was a significant change for such a reputed company. Tata motors made huge losses in later part of 1990's however with consistent focus it became competitive and has posted a better than expected profit in recent years.

In addition, Tata Motors has launced very prestigious projects such as Indica (mid-size pessenger car), a car worth $2000. It also gained global recognization by purchasing world famous brands such as Land Rover. In my view, it would not have been possible had company continued in the old working style.

Althoug I believe that a company needs time to face competition, it can acheive more when there is pressure of competion than without competition.