127 The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City
and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve overall productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the argument, the director recommends that Acme should pay for all its employess to take the Easy Read course. To strengthen his recommendation, the director points out that some of the employess of other companies have benefited greatly from the course. He also points out that the fee of the course is relatively low compared to the benefits of the improved productivity it might bring. However, there are several questions that remained unknown which make the director’s recommendation unconvincing as it stands.
To start with, the director has to prove that it is the Easy Reading course that lead to the success of its graduates. Perhaps the increased productivity in those other companies were due to its improved management strategy. Furthermore, I don’t know the reading spead of the graduate who read 500 pages in two hour before he or she has attended the course. Perhaps he or she was a good reader to start with. Similarly, I don’t know whether that other graduate who rose to vice president has worked extremely hard. Either these scenarios would weaken the directors claim that the graduates of the course have greatly benefited from it and that their productivity have increased due to the course. The director must provide evidence that graduates of the course have greatly increased their reading speed. He must also rule out other factors that lead to the graduate’s success and the companies’ improved productivity such as industriousness or better management.
Secondly, even assume that Easy Reading Course is highly beneficial to improve employees’ reading speeding as well as their productivity in many other companies, the question that whether Acme Publishing Company will be equally benefited is still unanswered. I don’t know how many posts in Acme requires fast reading. It is possible that some posts, such as editors, reauire one to read and absorb as fast as he or she could. In this case, Acme will be greatly benefited. However, if such posts are only a small portion of the overall posts in Acme and the people on these posts happen to be abled readers already, then the directors recommendation that the beneficial enrollment of all employees in the course is dubious as best. To convince me, the director must answer the question that how many posts in Acme require fast reading as a necessary ability.
Finally, even accepting that Easy Reading Course will greatly enhance employees’ reading speed and most work in Acme requires fast reading, there is still the problem of the the evaluation of cost and benifits. Although the director points out that the fee of the course is $500 per person, he fails to inform me if there will be any extra cost. He mentions that the course is in another city. So there is the question that whether Acme should pay for the travelling and accomadation cost of the course or whether the employees should pay for these costs. The former case would generate a considerable amount of extra cost for Acme, which might outweigh the benefits. The later would discourage the employees from attending the course all over. In either of these cases, the benefits of taking the course is greatly weakened. To better evaluate his recommendation, the director must take into account all the possible costs and weigh benefits against cost to decide whether the recommendation is worthwhile.
In sum, the director’s recommendation is unconvincing due to several unanswered questions. To bolster it, he must prove that Easy Reading course is the reason of employees’ enhanced reading speed and increased productivity, that Acme will be greatly benefited from the course for a large part of its work requires fast reading and that all potential cost as well as the cost wouldn’t outweigh the benefits.
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发表于 2012-8-6 10:02:05
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