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.
The argument with conclusion that the company should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use is weak. It is based on two premises that employees using the Internet need to be identified and punished to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, and that the company can prevent employees from wasting time and perform better with the aid. However, there are many missed assumptions needed to be stated, as explaining in the following paragraphs.
First, the assumption that there are so many employees using Internet that the business is affected. There are no statement about the quality of these "abuse" is pretty bad, while it may really exist. In fact, there is no guarantee that many workers use Internet during their worktime such that they are not concentrating on their work. It deserve some explanation about how bad the problem is.
In addition, it should also be mentioned in the argument that such an "abuse" is extremely affected that result in the decrease of the productivity. It seems really that bad that one of the leaders in the company want to take some action. However, what if he (or she) just see part of the truth? Maybe some of them did the "wicked" doing while most of the workers are diligent in their own work. Even more, the employees who did things seemed similar to it may just search for ideas if the jobs happenly require some creativity. It all should be included in the argument in order to make it stronger.
Furthermore, the crucial point that the company should install the software is that workers will not waste their time on using Internet. However, there lies in a hidden assumption that employees have no other ways to waste their time. Watchin TV, reading newspapper, or simply gassiping are all wasting time and, of course, will affect the performance of the company. If it is the case, then strict regulation and management preventing them from doing them should be mentioned.
In the end, the argument is rather weak. However, if assumotions above are explained in the argument, it will be greatly reinforced. Hence, the recommadation from the vice president shoud not be accepted as truth. To restrict the use of Internet, there ought to be more comfirmations.
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Sentence: It deserve some explanation about how bad the problem is.
Description: The fragment It deserve some is rare
Suggestion: Possible agreement error: Replace deserve with verb, past tense
Sentence: It seems really that bad that one of the leaders in the company want to take some action.
Description: The fragment company want to is rare
Suggestion: Possible agreement error: Replace want with verb, past tense
Sentence: However, if assumotions above are explained in the argument, it will be greatly reinforced.
Error: assumotions Suggestion: assumptions
Sentence: Hence, the recommadation from the vice president shoud not be accepted as truth.
Error: recommadation Suggestion: recommendation
Error: shoud Suggestion: should
Sentence: To restrict the use of Internet, there ought to be more comfirmations.
Error: comfirmations Suggestion: confirmations
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 382 350
No. of Characters: 1826 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.421 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.78 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.583 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 122 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 68 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.19 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.595 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.285 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.515 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5