The following appeared in a memorandum from the information technology department of a major advertising firm:
“The more efficient a firm’s employees are, the more profitable that firm will be. Improvements in a firm’s information technology hardware and software are a proven way to increase the efficiency of employees who do the majority of their work on computers. Therefore, if our firm invests in the most powerful and advanced information technology available, employee productivity will be maximized. This strategy ensures that every dollar spent on enhanced information technology will help to increase our firm’s profit margins.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The author’s argument is flawed in at least three ways. First, the author’s assertion that investing in information technology will increase productivity is dubious at best. If a person’s efficiency is a function of the number of keystrokes he or she types, then typing proficiency becomes the least of an employee’s problems. If a worker spends ten hours a day clicking a mouse and entering data into a keyboard, that individual’s productivity will be severely limited. Furthermore, if the employee spends the majority of his or her time using a personal computer, he or she may spend so much time looking at inscrutable graphs and pie charts, or reading on technical websites, that he or she may lose sight of the importance of doing actual work. To put it another way, the old adage of ‘time is money’ is truer than ever, and employees will be more efficient if their time is used more directly
Second, the author asserts that ‘every dollar spent on enhanced information technology will help to increase our firm’s profit margins.’ While the author is correct that information technology can help employees work more efficiently, this argument assumes that the firm’s costs remain constant. If the cost of providing products and services decreases, or if demand for that product increases, then a firm’s profit margins may not increase as much as expected. In addition, any additional costs that the firm must incur in order to purchase new hardware and software may be passed on to its customers, decreasing the firm’s overall profitability. Third, the author has failed to take into account the possibility that enhanced information technology can actually hurt the firm’s profitability. If new technology is expensive to maintain and employees are not trained properly to use it, they may spend more time on administrative tasks than actually producing goods and services, thus reducing productivity. Therefore, investing in such technology may be more profitable than it seems at first glance. If more thought is given to these issues, it may be more productive for a firm to invest its resources in other ways to improve its bottom line.