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 claims that monitoring employee’s internet use from their workstations would improve productivity. Stated in this way, the argument fails to mention several key factors on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is weak and has several flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that employees who use internet from their workstations are not productive because it is spent on personal and recreational activities. This statement is a stretch and not substantiated in any way. For example, how does the author know that employees using the internet from their work stations are using it for personal use? It could be that they are using it to improve themselves which indirectly impacts productivity. Someone could be looking up how to resolve some work related issues or even maybe studying for some online courses that could improve their productivity. In other words, there is no substantial or quantifiable evidence that supports this assumption. The argument would have been much clearer if it explicitly gave examples or some quantifiable evidence that employees productivity increases with monitoring internet use from their workstations.
Secondly, the argument claims that by installing software to detect internet use, it would prevent employees from wasting time, improve profits and foster a better work ethic. This is again a weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between internet use and better work ethics. The argument predicts the future and hopes that the installation of this software would foster better work ethics. For example, it is possible that monitoring employee’s internet usage could leave them feeling paranoid that they are being watched. How does this foster work ethics? This could instead increase suspicion and could create an environment for the employee that is not conducive. Perhaps if the argument had provided evidence that the use of this software would give rise to the above predictions, then the argument would have been a lot more convincing.
Finally, the argument concludes that installing this software would improve profits. How do we know that the financial gain from installing the software would give rise to profits? For all we know, the software could be very expensive and could increase expenses which could reduce profits. Without convincing answers to this question or supporting evidence from other businesses where this strategy worked, one is left with the impression that the claim is more wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerable strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts or some form of quantifiable evidence.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 453 350
No. of Characters: 2412 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.613 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.325 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.767 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 175 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 112 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.623 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.458 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.334 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.516 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.131 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 816, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'employees'' or 'employee's'?
Suggestion: employees'; employee's
...ples or some quantifiable evidence that employees productivity increases with monitoring ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, hence, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, for example, in conclusion, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 34.0 55.5748502994 61% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2470.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 453.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.45253863135 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61343653406 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89517357475 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.454746136865 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 753.3 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 44.3084007272 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.916666667 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.875 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.95833333333 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => 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: 0.166161444463 0.218282227539 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0585220697563 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0866351663872 0.0701772020484 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0966771256473 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0659193721352 0.0628817314937 105% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.75 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.33 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.0 12.3882235529 57% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.