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Writing Recommendation Reports 19 519

For the study of photocopiers, your conclusion might be that the Sharp
model is the best copier: it meets all your necessary criteria and the greatest
number of desirable criteria, or it scores highest on your matrix. Depending
on your readers’ preferences, you can present your conclusions in any one of
three ways.
• Rank all the options: the Sharp copier is the best option, the Ricoh copier is
second best, and so forth.
• Classify all the options in one of two categories: acceptable and unacceptable.
• Present a compound conclusion: the Sharp offers the most technical capa-
bilities; the Ricoh is the best value.

formulate Recommendations based on the conclusions

If you conclude that Option A is better than Option B — and you see no obvi-
ous problems with Option A — recommend Option A. But if the problem has
changed or your company’s priorities or resources have changed, you might
decide to recommend a course of action that is inconsistent with the conclu-
sions you derived. Your responsibility is to use your judgment and recom-
mend the best course of action.

ethicS note
Presenting Honest Recommendations
As you formulate your recommendations, you might know what your readers want
you to say. For example, they might want you to recommend the cheapest solution, or
one that uses a certain kind of technology, or one that is supplied by a certain vendor.
Naturally, you want to be able to recommend what they want, but sometimes the facts
won’t let you. Your responsibility is to tell the truth — to do the research honestly and
competently and then present the findings honestly. Your name goes on the report.
You want to be able to defend your recommendations based on the evidence and your
reasoning.
One worrisome situation that arises frequently is that none of the options would be a
complete success, or none would work at all. What should you do? You should tell the
truth about the options, warts and all. Give the best advice you can, even if that advice is
to do nothing.

WRiting RecoMMendation RePoRtS

The following discussion presents a basic structure for a recommendation
report. Remember that every document you write should reflect its audience,
purpose, and subject. Therefore, you might need to modify, add to, or delete
some of the elements discussed here.

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