argument209 给点意见吧

ghost33UID: 2267869

TOPIC: ARGUMENT209 - The following recommendation was made by the Human Resources Manager to the board of directors of the Fancy Toy Company.

"In the last three quarters of this year, under the leadership of our president, Pat Salvo, our profits have fallen considerably. Thus, we should ask for her resignation in return for a generous severance package. In Pat's place, we should appoint Rosa Winnings. Rosa is currently president of Starlight Jewelry, a company whose profits have increased dramatically over the past several years. Although we will have to pay Rosa twice the salary that Pat has been receiving, it will be well worth it because we can soon expect our profits to increase considerably."
WORDS: 558   TIME: 0:42:08          DATE: 2007-7-14

The Human Resources Manager recommends changing president in order to increase profit in this argument. At first glance, his argument seems quite reasonable since during Pat Salvo's management, the company lost considerable profit; while Rosa Winnings helped her Starlight Jewelry (SJ) get more and more profit. However, further examination shows that this argument suffers from several logical flaws.

To begin with, when the manager recommends to replace Pat for Rosa, he makes three assumptions, which, without more supporting materials, undermine his argument: (1) It is Pat's ineptitude caused the company to lose huge profit; (2) It is Rosa's special talent increased SJ's profit; (3) Every aspect of a toy company is the same as that of a jewelry company.

In the first place, the first assumption is tenable, due to incomplete information and analysis. For one thing, the manager shows no evidence that he ever investigates the real reason of the company's decreased profit; instead, he simply credits this failure to the president, Pat. But common sense tells us that while a president plays a crucial role in a company, there are also many other factors which can account for a company's failure: for example, the depressing market, the changing state of a company, one better policy which the directors rejected and so on.  For another, the manager only cites the bad records-- the company lost profit in the last 3 quarters of this year--and ignores other records. Then, since we know nothing about Pat's other work, it is quite possible that under Pat's leadership, the company has enjoyed a significant profit increase until the beginning of this year. And the adversary's changing policy gave the company a unimaginable impact that without Pat, the company may lose more profit. Thus, without ruling out these possibilities, we cannot accept that the company lost profit because of Pat.

In the second place, while a president does not necessarily account for a company's failure, the opposite is also true--Rosa may perform ordinarily in SJ. Maybe the jewelry market is in its prosperous market, or the jewelry market has fewer competitors, or even worse, maybe Rosa's policy has made SJ's profit increase less. Then again, without further analysis, we will not accept that Rosa is a good president simply because SJ happened to earn more during her leadership.

In the third place, generally speaking, a toy company is different from a jewelry company in many aspects. A toy company deals with children, while a jewelry company tries to attract adult in middle and upper class. Their market polices can be quite different. Then whether Rosa can be qualified as a president in a toy company remains uncertain.

What's more, the manager's assertion that giving Pat a generous severance package and offering Rosa a salary twice of Pat's will be well worth needs further debate. Since we have no detail information about the concrete mount of the money, it is quite possible that Rosa cannot bring enough extra profit to cover this money. In this case, the company may still lose money and the recommendation has no real value.

In conclusion, this argument is not will substantiated. To better support his argument, the manager needs pay more attention to the cause of the company's recent 3 quarter's lost and examine carefully whether Rosa can lead the company to a better stage.