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 officesHidden text (n. Hidden text ) 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... etc.

The author’s argument that the company should close its field offices to increase profitability, because such centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and helping the company maintain better supervision of all employees. This line of reasoning is flawed with several fallacies and unsubstantiated assumptions.

The main assumption is that only by closing field offices and doing business centrally will increase profits is flawed. There are several other factors that affect the business of the company such as decline in the overall industry in which this company is operating, increase in the competition in the industry that has eaten the share of the apogee company, or recession in the economy has overall affected the industry. So, these factors can adversely affect the business of the company, despite of the centralization of the operation to cut the operating expenses.

Another flawed reasoning is that the centralization of the operations will help company to improve supervision of all employees. The field offices at various local locations are more effective in monitoring the field staff activities rather than centralized office in the main city. The shutting of local offices does reduce the operating costs, but at the cost of immense lost of business opportunities at local level such as cultivating new local areas for product sales or serving the customers more closely to get the repeat orders at local level by the filed offices. Thus, field offices increase the relation of company with the customers at local ore regional level more effectively than the centralized office.

The author’s extreme reasoning of closing all the field offices is unsubstantiated. There may be some of the field offices whose profitability may be the concern for the management. But, generalizing to close all the field offices may profoundly cut the contact of the company with its field staff, customers, or local channel players. This is the extreme preventive action that may backlash in the future.

To conclude, I must say that this argument is flawed with fallacies and unsubstantiated assumptions as discussed above. To make an argument more logical, the author must make some valid assumptions such as consideration of other factors: recession or overall market scenario that may affect the business and the effectiveness of the field offices in building relationships at local level. The author also need to review the extreme view point of shutting all the field offices.

Good One...