Rate my AWA - argument

[bleacherseat]

The following appeared in a memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company.

“When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than 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.”



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.



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Citing the fact that Apogee company is less profitable today than it was earlier, the author argues that decreased profitability is because of the dencentralization of the company. To increase the profitability,author recommends that company should close down its field offices and operate cenrtally. Accoriding to author this centalization would cut cost and help company maintain close supervision of employees.This argument is critcally flawed because it ignores several extremely critical factors

First,the author assumes that company is less profitable because of decentalization. There is no evidence to support this assumption. It is equally like that Apogee Company is less profitable because of other factors such as increased competetion, low quality of its products/services or incompetent management etc.

Second,the author says that centralization would cut cost and help maintain close supervision of employees. While this may be true,the author ignores the costs asscoaited with centralization. These costs may be too prohibitve for the company,hampering it's profits. Also, centralization may not result in the desired changes as cited by the author. The author presents no evidence to conclude without a doubt that centralization would result in changes,cited by the author.

Lastly, author ignores other operationg problems that centralization may cause. It is possible that company may find it hard to hire talented employees in the area of it;s operation or that high performing executives of the company may not be intrested in the moving to the area of its operation. The author also ignores to address the possibility that company might have reduced flexibility to respond to changes in market because of its centralized structure.

This argument will be well served,if author provides additional evidence that proves that decentralization is indeed responsible fot the reduced profitability of the company and that centralization would result in changes as cited by the author.The argument also needs to convey how the risks asscoaited with centralization would be mitigated.