Question:
“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.”
Answer
The argument suggests that the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location,since the COmpany was more profitable when it had all its operations in one locations.The argument claims such centralization would improve the company's profiability by cutting costs and helping the company maintain a better supervision of all employees.The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.
Firstly,the argument readily assumes that the only reason that the company was more profitable in the past than it is today,is that it had all its operations in one location.The argument ignores that there are several other factors that could influence the profitability of the company.For example,it is possible that the company had better,more efficient employees in the past that it does today,leading to higher efficiency and subsequently to more prfitability.Hence,the argument would have been much clearer if it explicitely stated that having all its operations in one location directly helped Apogee Company in earning more profits than it does today.
In addition,the argument unreasonably assumes that since the Company was more profitable in the past than it is today because it had all its operations in one location,if it closed down all its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location again,it would achieve the same level of profitibility.It is possible that the transportaion is much more costly today than it was in the past.So,Conducting all its operations from a single location can result in significantly higher transportation costs,which may ofset any additional profits that company was able to achieve by following the argument's suggested plan.If the the argument had provided evidence suggesting that all such factors would not have significant impact on the company's profitabily, then the argument would have been a lot more convincing.
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