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itsnehas
 
 

Review comments and approx. score on Analysis of an Issue

by itsnehas Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:03 pm

MGCAT-2
"Companies should be prohibited from monitoring e-mail correspondence of their employees, since this policy destroys the atmosphere of trust and undermines employee morale."

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

The statement says that companies should not monitor e-mail correspondence of their employees since this policy destroys the atmosphere of trust and undermines employee's morale.

I defer with the statement and would like to put forth some guiding thoughts behind the same.

Each company has a set of clients who share very valuable information with them and trust them to keep this information secure.Clearly the ownership of maintaining the information secure lies with the orgaization.Breach of trust with these clients means loss of revenue.Any such case not only damages the relationship with the client but also impacts the brand image of this company drastically.
Hence a company managing a high number of employess cannot risk their clientage by trusting all the employees when one such bad case has a big impact.The means they can use to do the same is a proper surveillance of any information being shared using their environment.

The infrastucture/brand image of a company is supposed to be used in best interest of the comany and not for personal benefits. There have been cases wherein employees have used their official email identification for personal benefit which would not have been traced without proper surveillance in place. Any misuse of this brand image for personal benefit does not impact an individual only but also does a big damage to the image of the employer.This becomes more important in today's environment when media is ready to capture minutest detail and spread across the message while these companies are in cut throat competetion.

I would also like to mention that the assertion that "this undermines an employee's morale" is how an individual perceives the whole scenario.If an employee understands this is in the best interest of the organiztion , they would never develop such a perception.Most of the companies who have such a system in place send out warnings initially and take drastic action only when the action is unpardonale and impacts the organization. There have been very frequent cases of hacking,misusing avaliable information like trading data, SSN number , credit card numbers etc for personal gain.

Besides, there are other methods available for non restricted personal use and if one has to, one can use them for any such needs.

I would like to conclude by saying that in today's world where we are heading towards e-transactions ,the number of e-thefts are also growing . To progess the onus is on an organization to maintain a secure system , which is not possible without both co-operation of employess and surveillance of the whole setup. Hence if companies trust their employess and yet do necessary checks to ensure that their trust is justified , it is aboslutely correct and necessary.
StaceyKoprince
ManhattanGMAT Staff
 
Posts: 9349
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:05 am
Location: Montreal
 

by StaceyKoprince Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:51 pm

I'd grade this about a 3. It is clear that English is not your native language, and you will need to work on this in order to write a stronger essay. Some of the errors are significant enough to obscure your meaning, which has a much greater impact on your score than a few grammar or syntax errors spread throughout (though you also have lots of those).

For example, you say "I defer with the statement and would like to put forth some guiding thoughts behind the same. " "Defer" means either to postpone something or to hold back your own thoughts or opinions in preference to someone else's thoughts or opinions. That is definitely not the word you want here - the essay wants your opinion. Based on the rest of your essay, I think you want to say that you agree with the statement, but I had to read the rest of the essay to figure that out. I should know from the start what your thesis is.

You don't need to start out with a sentence that just summarizes the statement; the grader will also be able to see the statement. You also don't want paragraphs that consist of just one sentence. Instead, you want to write about four complete paragraphs that do the following:

- Intro paragraph (#1)
State your thesis clearly (agree or disagree) while acknowledging that reasonable people might choose the other option. Mention the two examples you are going to use to support your thesis (don't go into detail).

- Body paragraph (#2)
Detail the best of your two examples. Make it concrete and real-world, not hypothetical; you use hypotheticals below. So, don't talk abstractly about how a company has clients and the clients trust the company etc. Talk about your company, and a specific incidence in which one of your clients trusted your company to do something or not to do something. Or talk about a company you read in a case study or magazine article - but it has to be a specific, real example. Then tie this example explicitly to the thesis you chose - spell out for the reader why this example supports your thesis.

- Body paragraph (#3)
Do the same thing with the second of your two examples.

- Conclusion paragraph (#4)
Restate your thesis while still acknowledging that reasonable people can disagree. (Use different words than you used in the intro, though.) Summarize why your examples support your thesis. Write a final "concluding sentence" that wraps everythiing up neatly.

Good luck!
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director, Content & Curriculum
ManhattanPrep