I'm not Mo's Profile

Great article John!

There’s a tension between being efficient and being safe. From employers’ perspectives, they want to keep pushing efficiency to the limit, given the competitive environment.

If we take a perspective of how truck drivers process, they would have to give in the input (driving time, driving behavior, rest time, etc) through the process (driving, speeding, following regulations) to generate the outcome (efficiency, being on time, etc.) . Traditionally, drivers were given flexibility in their inputs and processes, and employes measured outcomes only. This method leaves rooms to the drivers to manage their driving behavior, speeding, and following regulations. Once the tracking machine has been introduced, now we measure process and outcome at the same time, which could cause backlash to what input they have to innovate. As a result, we have witness a sad example of the driver you mentioned.

Now, my bigger question to this is … the more we push for efficiency, the more privacy and risky lines we are crossing. How far, as a future business leader, should we cross? Or at least make the society push back. Is it the regulator job? I hope the regulator could act on our behalf.

Thank you for the article! The automating warnings and termination paperwork sound really bad to me, thinking about how humans could not keep their work straight up all the time. As Prof. Polzer said in the class, people are noisy. Partly, I believe us, the consumers, are also key contributors to this bad working environment. My conflicting feeling knowing this issue is why people still support Amazon knowing this news. I am curious how far could Amazon go using this dehumanized approach? My hypothesis is that if society cares about this, society could pressure Amazon to reconsider its practice. But … this’s far from what I’ve witnesses counting Amazon delivery boxes in Rock Center’s basement.

Brittany,

Reflecting on this, I feel that having more technology, even with an aim to solve some basic challenges, would even make discrimination more prominent. This broke my heart as I am someone believing in using technology for making society better. I believe that having better technology gives us an ability to adjust and change things appropriately. However, your article proves to me somewhat wrong. We cannot adjust for a better outcome have we not solved biases, conscious or unconscious.