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.
我写的： The vice president claims that the company should implement electronic monitoring of staff's computer use from workstations, asserting it is the best way to prevent employees to waste time during working hours and improve the company's profits. Although the conclusion of this vice president seems reasonable at first sight, it is not appropriate to take such measures because monitoring employees' Internet use actually betrays the principle of profit maximization.
First of all, common sense tells us that punishment will not bring profits to a company, and most of the successful companies provide their staff comfortable and relatively free working environments. That is because only when staff feel that they are part of the company and the people managing the company respect them, will they really love this company and through their passion and energy into the work. On the other side, people will no doubt feel violated and not being trusted when having their computers monitored. The distrust relationship between employers and employees may lead a company to failure rather than success.
Concerning the vice president's allegation that employees are wasting their time when they surf the Internet doing some relax, he or she obviously ignored the simple fact that all human beings needs a break during long working hours. In fact, nobody can bear to sit in front of the computer and handling work files continuously for 8 hours or more, even the vice president cannot I promise. Thus, instead of the old thinking that doing something that seems to have no relations with work is a waste of time, it is in fact necessary for people to leave their work and relax, which enable the employees to improve their working efficiency and make more profits for companies.
Then, the vice president clearly forgets the costs of implementing electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use. If the company wants to control all staff's Internet use, all the computers in this company should be updated, which will cost a large sum of money which diminish the company's profits. Even though the employers succeed in updating all computers in company with program to restrain the Internet use, the employees still can have their own laptops or cell phones on Internet at working place and it is impossible to force someone to use a monitoring program in private laptops and cell phones.
From all the discussions above, the idea that a company is able to improve its profits by monitoring the computers is neither practical nor effective. The best way to make more profits is to offer employees with necessary freedom, which can inspire their passion and energy, which is essential for making profits.
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发表于 2012-3-28 23:18:28
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