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34. The vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president.
"In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations. Employees who use the Internet from their workstations need to be identified and punished if we are to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, such as shopping or playing games. By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, we can prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve our overall profits."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
Argument34
28:44
In this argument the president concludes that inorder to improve their employee’s productivity, they should implement electronicmonitoring of employee’s Internet use. The president then claims that ifemployees who use the Internet from their workstations are identified andpunished, the time spent on personal and recreational activities includingshopping and playing games will be reduced. The president further claims thatby installing electronic monitor, they can prevent employees from wasting time,foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve their overall profits. Thisargument suffers from several critical flaws and is therefore unconvincing.
To begin with, the president unfairly assumesthat employees who use the Internet from their workstations are not working onthe Internet and therefore should be punished. This is not necessarily thecase. It is entirely possible that they are viewing relative price level, orperhaps they are negotiating with their clients. Either scenario, if true, willmake the punishment counterproductive and therefore seriously undermine thepresident’s conclusion that punishing employees who use Internet will reducethe time spent on personal and recreational stuff.
Next, even assuming the Internet are primarilyused for personal and recreational purpose, the president’s argument rests onthe assumption that reducing the time spent on the personal and recreationalactivities will necessarily improve their employees’ productivity. Yet thepresident fails to provide any evidence that such relationship exists. Absentevidence to the contrary, perhaps although their employees spent less time onpersonal and recreational activities, their productivity remain low due totheir poor efficiency, or perhaps they just spent the time saved by doing lessshopping and games doing nothing, in which case productivity will by no meansbe improved. Lacking evidence that reducing time spent on personal and recreationalactivities, the president cannot convince me that the desired result-improvedproductivity-will necessarily be realized.
Finally, even if reducing employees’ time spenton personal and recreational ends will improve the overall productivity, theauthor’s assumption that by fostering a better work ethic and improvingproductivity the profit will definitely be improved. Common sense informs usthat profit is a function of both revenue and cost. First, it is entirelypossible that although their employees’ productivity are improved, they justget their jobs done faster while no increase was made in terms of the numberand the amounts of contracts they made, rendering no increase in revenuehappened despite improved productivity. Secondly, even if they complete moredeals and the revenue has increased, perhaps while their productivity increasestheir costs increases more sharply, which is very likely because when they don’twork no cost related will happened and now they start to work and hence thecost increase incommensurably. Either case or the combination of them, if true,will made the improved profit nothing but a fantasy.
In sum, the argument is unconvincing as itstands. To strengthen it, the president must prove that the employees use Internetprimarily for personal and recreational purpose and that reducing the timespent on personal and recreational activities by employees will lead toimproved productivity. The president must also provide clear evidence that byfostering a better work ethic and improving productivity the profit willdefinitely be improved.
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发表于 2013-3-18 00:20:02
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