"The falling revenues that the company is experiencing coincide with the delays in manufacturing. These delays, in turn, are due in large part to poor planning in purchasing metals. Consider further that the manager r of the department that handles purchasing of raw materials has an excellent background in general business, psychology, and sociology, but knows little about the properties of metals. The company should, therefore, move the purchasing manager to the sales department and bring in a scientist from the research division to be manager of the purchasing department."

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The author concludes that induction of a scientist as a purchase manager is a solution to the falling revenues of a particular company.The speaker assumes that poor planning in purchasing metals can be overcome by only having knowledge about the properties of metals. The argument is unconvincing for several reasons.

Firstly, the author's conclusion that a scientist is more qualified to manage a purchase division based on the reasoning that he has enough knowledge about the properties of metals is not persuasive. For a better planning of any operation, it requires more of managerial skills than that of research capabilities. It requires good bargaining capability to purchase materials at lower price without compromising quality for which a manager is a better choice than a scientist.

Secondly, the argument simply attributes poor planning in purchasing metals to manager's lack of knowledge in property of metals. It doesn't consider other possibilities which might have contributed to the poor performance such as there might be unexpected delays in delivery, or the market might be in economic downturn and all other competitors are facing the same decrease in revenues due to unwillingness of customers to purchase products. Plus, the conclusion that current purchase manager should be shifted to sales department without giving enough evidence that the purchase manager has good skill in sales business makes the argument unacceptable.


In order to make the argument more persuasive, the author should conduct a study to find all the factors that have contributed to decrease in revenues of the company and their significance. The argument should have compared the performance of the company with its competitors to find whether the fall in revenues can be attributed solely to its internal factors

On the whole, the argument lacks supportive data to agree author's conclusion that a scientist is more qualified to run a purchase operation just that he has more knowledge about the properties of metals. It appears to overlook other possibilities which might have under-lied the decrease in revenues.