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.
In the prompt, the vice president of human resources at Climpson Industries has recommended the company’s president to implement electronic monitoring of employees’ internet use in order to improve the productivity of their employees and if they are successful in this case, then their overall profit will increase. However, the vice president relies on the three unwarranted assumptions that, if not substantiated, dramatically reduced the persuasiveness of its recommendation.
To begin with, the recommender has assumed that the employees are mostly wasting their time on the internet. So, in order to improve their productivity, the company should punish them by reducing the number of hours they spend on the internet. However, the employees may not use the internet for their personal and recreational activities. Maybe they spend their time on theirs think, like gossiping or using their personal phones. Also, they can use their personal phone for shopping and playing games. If that is the case, then installing software on their laptop will not show any Internet use and the company can not, in reality, improve the employees’ productivity that can improve their profit.
Secondly, the vice president has assumed that the productivity of the employees is less because they are spending more time on the internet. But it can be possible that their productivity is not proportional to their internet use; they may rarely use the internet for personal activities. Maybe the employees are not that skilled and proficient workers; maybe they are incompetent to their task and because of this, they are less productive. If there is any truth to it, then the vice president’s recommendation does not hold water.
Thirdly, the recommender has assumed that punishing the employees for wasting time on the internet can improve productivity and can foster better work ethics. However, doing this may create conflict between employees and the company. It can be possible that the most efficient and skilled employees have done their work properly and they have spent some time on recreational activities. Therefore, punishing them for wasting time can make them discouraged and unhappy about the policy. So, if there is any possibility, then the work ethic may not be better for punishing the person who is working efficiently for the entire time.
In conclusion, the recommendation, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the vice president can provide three pieces of evidence stated above and perhaps conduct a systematic research study, then it can be possible to determine whether installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers can improve the overall profit.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 434 350
No. of Characters: 2264 1500
No. of Different Words: 177 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.564 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.217 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.881 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 98 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.382 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.842 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.087 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 10, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...uters can improve the overall profit.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, in conclusion, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 46.0 28.8173652695 160% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2341.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39400921659 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99940974748 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.426267281106 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 724.5 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.6304777644 57.8364921388 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.210526316 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.8421052632 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.89473684211 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.348135964587 0.218282227539 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.127077486622 0.0743258471296 171% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.118936070718 0.0701772020484 169% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.23754241183 0.128457276422 185% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.137612199538 0.0628817314937 219% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.28 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.