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 . . . etc.
The argument discussed in the memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company claims that the company gains much more profits when it conducts the operations in a single place. Consequently, they suggest shutting down the company’s other workplaces and operating only in one location. The business department hypothesizes that such concentration in one place would decrease costs and increase the supervision of employees and would result in growth in the profitability of the company. However, the statement is unconvincing and has three main flaws.
First of all, demands of today’s customers have been more complex. All customers want to pay for the services and goods of the companies which are close to their houses or workplaces. Thus, in contrast with the author’s views, centralization in one place would cause the distrust and loss of interests of the customers. As a result, company would lose a certain amount of its market share and witness decrease in profits. The companies which are close to the customers can survive and gain more than their competitors in today’s business conditions.
Secondly, the argument claims that closing the field offices and having only one headquarter would help the company to cut the costs and optimize the profits. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any direct correlation between the number of offices and profits. There might be other reasons which affect the profitability. For instance, the decisions of the managers, motivation of employees etc. should also be analysed in detail before drawing any conclusion with regard to the field offices.
Finally, although the field offices of the company do not operate, the employees and managers should travel to the fields in order to meet the customers and to maintain their businesses there. Thus, the author states that centralization would cut the costs and increase the effectiveness of the supervision. However, the transportation costs of the employees and other related costs would rise. Consequently, the questions like “Do travel costs exceed the costs of maintaining field offices?”, “How would the managers supervise the employees during their travelling to the fields?” remain open to debate. Without convincing answers to these questions, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of an amateur thinking rather than substantive evidence.
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 with respect to the correlation between decreasing costs and concentration in a single office. In order to assess the merits of a certain situation, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In this particular case, the aspects such as motivation of employees, decisions of managers, travel costs, supervision issues should be taken into account. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-30 | gautam0196 | 50 | view |
| 2019-08-11 | preetish | 77 | view |
| 2018-11-29 | nicktyranov | 54 | view |
| 2016-09-27 | yusif.usubov | 83 | view |
| 2016-09-27 | Yves | 83 | view |
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Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'consequently', 'finally', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'then', 'therefore', 'thus', 'for instance', 'in conclusion', 'in contrast', 'such as', 'as a result', 'first of all', 'with regard to', 'with respect to']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.280071813285 0.25644967241 109% => OK
Verbs: 0.125673249551 0.15541462614 81% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0592459605027 0.0836205057962 71% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0430879712747 0.0520304965353 83% => OK
Pronouns: 0.016157989228 0.0272364105082 59% => OK
Prepositions: 0.116696588869 0.125424944231 93% => OK
Participles: 0.0269299820467 0.0416121511921 65% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.13577032889 2.79052419416 112% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0269299820467 0.026700313972 101% => OK
Particles: 0.00179533213645 0.001811407834 99% => OK
Determiners: 0.127468581688 0.113004496875 113% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0251346499102 0.0255425247493 98% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00718132854578 0.0127820249294 56% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3121.0 2731.13054187 114% => OK
No of words: 480.0 446.07635468 108% => OK
Chars per words: 6.50208333333 6.12365571057 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68069463864 4.57801047555 102% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.414583333333 0.378187486979 110% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.33125 0.287650121315 115% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.260416666667 0.208842608468 125% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.18125 0.135150697306 134% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.13577032889 2.79052419416 112% => OK
Unique words: 234.0 207.018472906 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.4875 0.469332199767 104% => OK
Word variations: 56.0817528855 52.1807786196 107% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.4482238627 57.7814097925 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.041666667 141.986410481 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.875 0.724660767414 121% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 53.125 51.9672348444 102% => OK
Elegance: 2.29126213592 1.8405768891 124% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.554390495932 0.441005458295 126% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.115039140805 0.135418324435 85% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0696845488463 0.0829849096947 84% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.5789528322 0.58762219726 99% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.141131783865 0.147661913831 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.228725383328 0.193483328276 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.111447257582 0.0970749176394 115% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.534332793385 0.42659136922 125% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0833115724559 0.0774707102158 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.402509435783 0.312017818177 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0934341011279 0.0698173142475 134% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.33743842365 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.87684729064 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 10.0 6.46551724138 155% => OK
Negative topic words: 5.0 5.36822660099 93% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 19.0 14.657635468 130% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. The e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.