Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
average of 15 seconds reading and deleting the message. That adds up to 10 minutes of
lost productivity.
Half of the employees spent 5 minutes complaining about what Ann did with a
coworker. You can imagine the typical conversation. “What makes her so special?” “How
does she get away with this kind of thing?” “If I did this for my kid, I'd get in trouble."
Taking both the employee's time and the coworker's time into account, Acme loses 10
minutes of productivity for each conversation. Multiplying 10 minutes by 20 conversa-
tions gives us 200 minutes.
The total time wasted equals 210 minutes or 3.5 hours. Assume the average Acme
employee makes $20 per hour. The cost of the lost productivity is 3.5 hours times $20
per hour or $70.
The benefit of $108 exceeds the cost of $70, so we may conclude that Ann's action
was good. We should note, however, that all of the benefit went to the Girls Scouts and
all of the cost was borne by Acme Corporation. It would be perfectly reasonable if the
owners of Acme Corporation concluded that this kind of activity was not in the best
interests of the company and created a new policy forbidding the use of company email
for cookie drives and other fund-raisers.
RULE UTILITARIAN ANALYSIS
What would be the consequences if everyone used the company email system to solicit
donations to their favorite causes? All the employees would receive many more messages
unrelated to business. There would be plenty of grumbling among employees, lowering
morale. Reading and deleting these solicitations would waste people's time, a definite
harm. It's unlikely that any one cause would do well if everyone was trying to raise money
for his or her own charity. There is a good chance the owner would become aware of this
problem, and a logical response would be to ban employees from sending out this kind
of solicitation. Because the harms are much greater than the benefits, it is wrong to use
the company email system to solicit donations to a charity.
SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY ANALYSIS
Acme Corporation does not have a prohibition against using the company's email system
for personal business. You could say that by sending out her email solicitation, Ann was
exercising her right to free speech. Of course, she did it in a way that many people might
find obnoxious, because even if they did not choose to read her entire message, they had
to take the time to scan the subject line and delete it. Unlike spammers, however, Ann
did not disguise her identity as the sender, thereby providing unhappy recipients with
the opportunity to respond to her email and voice their disapproval of her solicitation.
If many of the 40 people who did not appreciate receiving her email sent a reply commu-
nicating their displeasure, then Ann got a taste of her own medicine by having to wade
through a bunch of unwanted email messages, and she may choose a better method of
advertising the Girl Scout cookie drive next year. From a social contract theory point of
view, Ann did nothing wrong.
