Please Rate my AWA section responses

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Please Rate my AWA section responses

by bijugm » Thu Feb 17, 2011 1:41 pm
VivianKerr or Tani Wolff can you please rate the essays. Greatly appreciate the ratings and work you guys are doing.
TIA.

Argument Question:
Read the argument and the instructions that follow it, and then make any notes that will help you plan your response. Begin typing your response in the box below.

The following paragraph recently appeared in an editorial printed in the opinion section of a local newspaper:
The recent surge in violence in the southern part of the city is a result of a shortage of police officers and an absence of leadership on the part of the city council. In order to rectify the burgeoning growth of crime that threatens the community, the city council must address this issue seriously. Instead of spending time on peripheral issues such as education quality, community vitality, and job opportunity, the city council must realize that the crime issue is serious and double the police force, even if this action requires budget cuts from other city programs.
With the alloted time remaining, dicsuss how well reasoned you find this argument.

My response:

The Argument about increased violence in the southern part of the city does not provide much detail on type violence or age group of the criminals. The argument is flawed for the following reasons and could be improved by providing addition details.
One of the reasons would be without knowing the type of violence it would be difficult to access the right solution. For example, if the problem is robberies. Then the reason for the spate of robberies might be the high unemployment rate in the area. By reducing the budget for education and job opportunity, clearly the problem is only going to increase in the near future.
Another problem with the argument is that it does not provide details of age group of the criminals. For example, if they are teenagers then reducing the budget for education would create more teenage criminals. Like the saying goes an idle mind is a devil's workshop. If these teenagers are involved in after school programs by mentors from the community that are given tax breaks for volunteering. The teenagers will be off the streets and would be more engaged in these programs.
Furthermore the argument mentions that increasing the police force will solve the problem. But studies have shown that just by increasing police force or enforcing the law stricter does not reduce crime. On the contrary if the crux of the problem is identified and tackled that would increase chances of reduction in violence.
In closing the argument would have been better support and convincing with all these additional details. In this competitive world where higher education is considered to be the best weapon against a poor or declining economy the argument is stating to reduce budgets for education. Consequently this would only increase the violence mentioned in the argument.

Analysis of an Issue:

Read the statement and the instructions that follow it, and then make any notes that will help you plan your response. Begin typing your response in the box below.

"What really matters in the leadership of business and organizations is getting results, reaching benchmarks, and achieving success."

With the alloted time remaining, dicsuss 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.

My Response:

Some people would argue that the end result and reaching milestones is all that really matters to leadership of business and organizations. But due to the following reasons we can see that the process to the end result also matters.
For instance in a freight company. Delivering the end products to customers in time would be considered a success. But clearly the process of how those packages reached the end client would also matter. In fact, when the driver of the freight truck does not have an optimized route for him to deliver the products. He would waste more fuel and take same route many times. If the route was optimized ahead of schedule. Similar routes would be less frequented and in turn less fuel used.
Similarly in software upgrade project if the leadership is only concerned with end result. Then by limiting scope of project and cutting quality of testing. We can deliver project on time and within budget. Surely this would create more work once we go live, because lot of bugs would be discovered during production support. Which would lead to more rework and increase cost of production support. Also employees will be unsatisfied with the results.
Hence on the one hand end results and milestones have to be reached to make business and organization successful. On the other hand the process to the end result should also be taken into account, or else the end result would be unsuccessful in the long run.

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by bijugm » Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:31 am
Anyone please rate these essays. Thanks,