ARGUMENT127 [spining sep]第三天 突破500，欢迎狠拍！

veinardUID: 2195006

ARGUMENT127 - The vice president for 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."
WORDS: 517              DATE: 2006-8-17

In this recommendation, the vice president for human resources at Climpson Industries claims that the company should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations to improve the employees' productivity. To support this advice, the arguer points out those employees who use the Internet from their workstations to spend their work hours on personal or recreational activities need to be identified and punished, and though detecting the Internet use on company computers they can benefit a lot. Through scrutiny I find the argument suffers from several logical flaws which prevent it from convincing.

First, the vise president unfairly assumes that the through implement electronic monitoring to detect employees' Internet use from their workstations, the work hours spent on personal or recreational activities can be remarkably reduced and thus the work hours can be assured. However, no evidence can prove these two matters have any cause-and-effect relationship. After shopping on line is prohibited, the employees are probably leave the company to do shopping on the supermarkets during the work hours if the company does not have strict system to prevent the absence in the work time. In a ward, besides shopping or playing games on line, the employees may have alternative ways to spend the wok hours on personal or recreational activities. Without ruling out this possibility, the arguer cannot convince me that the electronic monitoring can effectively reduce the number of work hours spent on other activities.

Second, even if implementing the electronic monitoring can truly reduce personal and recreational time during work hours, the arguer fails to prove that decreasing other activities which irrelevant to work will necessarily prevent employees from wasting time or fostering a better work ethic at Climpson. It is entirely possible that the skill or efficiency of the employees is not very satisfactory and then causes them still wasting time. Or perhaps the detection may generate a negative effect on the morale of the employees and consequently, result in diminishing the work ethic at Climpson. If so, the arguer cannot infer that by instilling the software to detect Internet use can prevent employees from wasting time and improve the work ethic at the company.

Third, even assuming that the software can really avoid wasting time and then foster a better work ethic, the arguer provide no evidence to prove that the final result of installing the software is the improvement on the overall profits. It is very likely that the cost of the software is high and cannot be offset by the increasing profits benefit from the time-saving and the better work ethic. Moreover, whether the costs of the software can be afforded by budgets of the company is also open to doubt.

In sum, this argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To strengthen it, the arguer should provide more evidence to demonstrate that the implement can effectively reduce the personal and recreational time during the work hour. To better assess the argument, I need to know the prospective employees' response of the detecting software and the information of the profit of the company and the cost of the software.