Hi everyone, i need some comments on my AWA skill. Please feel free to comment your thought about my essay below.
QuestionsThe 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... etc.
AnswerThe passage claims that Apogee Company had only one location to operate its business before it expanded into field offices, resulting in lower profitability. To increase its profitability, the company should close its fields offices and centralize all operations at one location. In addition to profitability improvement, better supervision of its employees can be achieve. The passage readily concludes that the closing field offices is the convincing plan to increase its profitability. To justify, the author states only closing field offices will satisfy the outcome. However, the plan omits other factors to evaluate its profitability. Further, the argument assumes that closing field offices will not affect its business in terms of operation. Hence, the argument is weak and has some serious flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that field offices are the main contributing factor that drive the company profitability. The passage omits other factors that may affect its profitability, for instance, economic condition. What if when the company had all its operations in one place the economic condition at that time was better than today? How different the size of the company today comparing to the size of the company in the past? The argument would have been more convincing, if the author had stated more concrete evidences.
Second, the passage does not states any consequences of closing field office other than lowering cost and increasing profit. Closing field offices may reduce costs. However, the passage do not gives any information about its business. This is again a very weak and unsupportive point to assess the full merits of the argument. Closing field offices may cause serious damage to the business in some case. For example, if the company has only offline sale channel and field offices are the main channel, operation of the business will have to change and may cause more costs in transforming its business. Surely, the author should also assess the cost to centralize the business. If the passage had given more expected effects of closing field offices, the passage could have been a lot clearer.
Finally, what are factors that would be relevant to predict the company’s profitability? what is the consequences of closing field offices? What is the business of the Apogee Company do? Without answer to these questions, the argument is more of a weak claim rather than substantiative evidence.
In summary, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned gap and is not convincing. It could be considerably strengthened, if the passage gives all relevant facts. In this particular case, the consequence of closing field offices in terms of operation would be the most critical to access the outcome. In order to assess the certain plan, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. Without answers, the argument remains unsupportive and open to debate.