"When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable that 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."


The argument claims that the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location because it could be more profitable this way and help the company to supervise all its employees. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors, on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence the argument is weak, unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the argument readily assumes that such a centralization improves profits by cutting costs. This statement is a stretch and not substantiated in any way. For example, the costs of the centralization itself could very well outweigh any cost cutting that are possible by centralizing the company's operations. Furthermore the author doesn't state any reason or evidence why the costs should decrease as a result of the centralization at all. The argument would have been much clearer if it explicitly gave examples of how cost savings could be achieved by centralizing the company.

Second, the argument claims that such a centralization would help the company to maintain better supervision of all employees. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between centralization and the ability to supervise employees. Because the total number of employees remains the same even with a centralization of the company, the author needs to explain how exactly the supervision is supposed to improve. If any such correlation had been shown, then the author would have sounded a bit more convincing.

Finally, the argument concludes that the centralization would be successful because the company has once been centralized and was more profitable back then. Yet, the author of the argument does not clearly answer the question whether this decrease in profitability was really due to the decentralization of the company. Without convincing answers to such questions, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts.