Management Resources Guide

Management Thinking Skills Training
Argumentation
A Guide to Effective Reasoning and its Role in
Organisations and Management
All programs are designed, written and produced to your organisation’s specific requirements.
What You Will Learn
Argumentation is not a very well understood aspect of human communication. Far from the
connotations of being combative, contentious, unpleasant and quarrelsome, argumentation is
the study of reasons given by people to justify their acts or beliefs and to influence the thought
or action of others. It’s about influence and persuasion through communication that attempts to
motivate and persuade others through reasoned judgment. The course is introductory in that it
does not presume any prior study of argumentation. Because argumentation is a daily
occurrence–everyone does it–the course is also sophisticated in that it offers a systematic
analysis, a precise vocabulary, and a philosophical foundation for what all too often is an activity
that we conduct intuitively and unconsciously.
We discuss the differences between formal and informal reasoning. The main patterns of formal
deduction—categorical, conditional, and disjunctive reasoning—are described in the training.
You will examine aspects of argumentation strategies and tactics, as it applies to an
organisational setting. The course defines the components of an argument (a claim, evidence, an
inference linking the evidence to the claim, and a warrant authorising the inference) and
describes how these components can be represented diagrammatically. During the training
course you will move from simple arguments to examine the structure of more complex
arguments. Multiple, coordinative, and subordinative structures illustrate the patterns by which
parts of complex arguments are brought together. You will explore how the choices among these
patterns make a difference to the understanding of the overall argument.
Every one of our training programs is uniquely designed and tailored to meet your specific
circumstances and objectives.
Topic Menu includes but is not limited to:
Argumentation and Rhetoric.
Primary Assumptions of Argumentation.
Formal and Informal Argumentation.
Argument Analysis and Diagramming.
Complex Structures of Argument.
Our constructed reality.
Case Construction—Requirements and
Options.
Stasis—The Heart of the Controversy.
Attack and Defence.
Language and Style in Argument.
Evaluating Evidence.
Reasoning from Parts to Whole.
Reasoning with Comparisons.
Establishing Correlations.
Moving from Cause to Effect.
Hybrid Patterns of Inference.
Validity and Fallacies.
Arguments among Experts.
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