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.
First and foremost, the vice president assumes a causal relationship between Internet use for personal or recreational activities and the productivity of employees. Even if it is a potential contributing factor to decreased productivity other factors potential have a more significant role in employees’ motivation to work hard. A potential explanation would be that the work conditions are not friendly for the employees which detracts them from concentrating to the tasks at hand. Perhaps, employees are sharing offices which are too noisy which has as result their distraction from their work. Wasting time surfing on the Internet might only be an indication of these poor work conditions. In other words, the employees are incapable of performing and turn their attention to other tasks that do not require concentration. If the author provides evidence that no other factors interfere with productivity the argument remains unconvincing.
Second, the author states that installing the monitoring software will prevent employees from wasting time on the Internet, because some kind of punishment will be implemented. However, even if wasting time surfing on the Internet might be the most important reason for reduced productivity, there is little evidence that punishment will eliminate this habit. This strongly depends on the type of punishment. Will it be terrorizing, making employees fearful that they will lose their job? If yes, this might be too harsh and result in reduced productivity, because employees will stop feeling safe. On the other hand, if the punishment is too light, it might not have an effect in Internet use. Therefore, a more clear definition of punishment and evidence of its effectiveness are strongly encouraged.
Finally, the author assumes that this policy will cause increased profits. Even if productivity is increased by the suggested measure, it is possible that other factors influence the company’s profits. For example, the product produced by Climpson might not be popular to the public and, thus, customers are less willing to purchase it. This would have a significant impact on the company’s revenue and would be unrelated to employees’ productivity. The vice president would strengthen his argument by providing evidence that the sole culprit of reduced profits is internal to the company and attributed to the how productive the employees are.
In conclusion, the recommendation of the vice president has several flaws and its validity is contingent upon assumption that potentially unfounded.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. //maybe people use their cellphone online.
argument 3 -- OK but partly, also need to argue: '...prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson...'
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 393 350
No. of Characters: 2106 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.452 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.359 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.974 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 156 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 76 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.65 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.65 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.482 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.088 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 832, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...asks that do not require concentration. If the author provides evidence that no ot...
^^
Line 5, column 623, Rule ID: THE_HOW[1]
Message: Did you mean 'how'?
Suggestion: how
...ternal to the company and attributed to the how productive the employees are. In con...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, second, so, then, therefore, thus, for example, in conclusion, kind of, in other words, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2181.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 393.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.54961832061 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.45244063426 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.15993245168 2.78398813304 114% => OK
Unique words: 196.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.498727735369 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 674.1 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.8417758568 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.05 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.65 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.95 5.70786347227 122% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.226174317285 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0676712737258 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0584969232774 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.133232388713 0.128457276422 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0552870643776 0.0628817314937 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.5 14.3799401198 101% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.91 12.5979740519 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.5 12.3882235529 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.