The following appeared in a memorandum from the human resources department of HomeStyle, a house remodeling business:“This year, despite HomeStyle’s move to new office space, we have seen a decline in both company morale and productivity, and a correspond

The argument above states that the company's moral and productivity declined whereas the the administrative costs increased after moving to a new office. The human resources department initiates to use a newly developed software package to solve the problem and takes another human resources department's satisfaction with the package into account. The argument relies on several unsupported assumptions and therefore fails to be persuasive.

The argument is rooted in the assumption that a newly developed software package will help to solve the problem because it did for another company. However, the author provides no evidence to support this key assumption. First of all, it does not show any reason why the company's moral and productivity declined whereas the the administrative costs increased. Maybe the package was helpful for human resources department at CounterBalance for other reasons. In addition, the problems might have been caused by moving to a new office. As a result, the employees are not content with that situation which may cause a bad motivation to work.

The argument appears to contradict its reasoning. The company just moved to a new office and this cannot be costless. Therefore, the increase in the administrative costs might be very much correlated with this fact. The argument fails to take such an important aspect into account. Thus, the argument cannot be convincing.

To make this argument persuasive, the author needs to present specific evidence to support the argument's assumptions. For instance, why did the company faced such problems, is because of moving to a new office or is it the same reason that the human resources department at CounterBalance faced and was able to solve it via the new package.

The problems stated in the argument are important factors but knowing them is not enough to solve the problem. Therefore, the reasons or causes should be pointed out in the argument. So that, the assumptions can be stronger and whatever the solution suggested can be convincing. In this way, the argument could have been be more thorough and convincing with such changes as discussed above.