AWA feedback please?

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AWA feedback please?

by na94 » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:42 am
The following is an excerpt from a memo written by the head of a governmental department:

"Neither stronger ethics regulations nor stronger enforcement mechanisms are necessary to ensure ethical behavior by companies doing business with this department. We already have a code of ethics that companies doing business with this department are urged to abide by, and virtually all of these companies have agreed to follow it. We also know that the code is relevant to the current business environment because it was approved within the last year, and in direct response to specific violations committed by companies with which we were then working-not in abstract anticipation of potential violations, as so many such codes are."

I wrote this answer in 30 mins:

The argument is flawed for numerous reasons. Primarily, the argument is based on the unwarranted assumption that companies agreeing to abide to the code of ethics is enough to ensure ethical behaviour, invalid. The argument presents inconclusive information, offering dubious support, and draws from this unreasonably far-reaching conclusions.

The evidence cited includes ambiguous language. For example, "stronger" ethics regulations is unclear. Does it imply to make new regulations that will help prevent a specific unethical situation, which can occur or does it imply to change the current regulations and to make them stricter because they aren't helping the company achieve its ethical goal?

Moreover, the argument fails to provide any justification regarding the cause and effect relationship that was established between the department ensuring ethical behavior and companies agreeing to the code of ethics. In fact, to agree to follow rules is different than applying those rules in daily life at work. Evidence that there weren't any violation to the code of ethics after a long period of supervision on the companies would have strengthen the argument. If we knew the statistics of violations of the code of ethics in these companies, we would have been able to evaluate the argument better.

The argument leaves many other unanswered questions. The argument assumes without warrant that what was held true one year ago will still hold true today. In fact, the business environment may change daily nowadays with all the new technologies available. So, assuming that it hasn't changed "it was approved within last year" is without basis. Had the argument provided information proving that the business environment hasn't changed from last year. Even then, the author needs to provide justification for another unwarranted evidence: the code of ethics was established based on only historical data. This again doesn't take into consideration the new changes that might occur in the working environment. So, the code of ethics only helps to deal with previous problems but it doesn't ensure ethical behavior in other predicted or assumed situations. This suggests that the code of ethics, unlike what the author assumes, might not be enough to ensure ethical behavior.

The argument is neither sound nor persuasive. The argument makes several unwarranted assumptions and it fails to make a convincing case that ethical behavior is ensured by companies agreeing to abide to the code of ethics.

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by Christian Krause » Thu Oct 06, 2016 3:39 am
I like your detailed style of argumentation. I think you recognized all the major flaws and sufficiently elaborated why they are incorrect, insufficient or unjustified.
I also believe that you might optimize scoring by writing shorter, more precise sentences as well as a slightly shorter essay overall.
Kind regards, Christian Krause
ps: I´d appreciate getting a feedback from you to my essay as well ;-)