With continual advances in technology, ranging from email to smartphones to virtual meeting
software, businesses have adopted an “always on” mindset, viewing the ability of their
employees to be available to their colleagues and customers in an instant as a valuable asset
But even as constant connectivity has increased productivity and customer satisfaction, many
businesses are also discovering that it can take a negative toll on their employees.
Carefully read the six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Write an
essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develops your position on
what are the most important factors for businesses to consider when creating policies related to
constant connectivity.
In your response you should do the following:
• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible position.
• Select and use evidence from at least three of the provided sources to support your line of
reasoning. Indicate clearly the sources used through direct quotation, paraphrase, or
summary. Sources may be cited as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the author’s name.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.
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Siggelkow, Nicolaj and Christian Terwiesch. “The Age of Continuous Connection.” Harvard
Business Review, Harvard Business Publishing, May-June 2019, hbr.org/2019/05/the-age-ofcontinuous-connection.
The following is excerpted from an online article published in a business journal.
A seismic shift is under way. Thanks to new technologies that enable frequent, low-friction, customized
digital interactions, companies today are building much deeper ties with customers than ever before. Instead
of waiting for customers to come to them, rms are addressing customers’ needs the moment they arise—and
sometimes even earlier. It’s a win-win: Through what we call connected strategies, customers get a
dramatically improved experience, and companies boost operational ef ciencies and lower costs.
Consider the Magic Bands that Disney World issues all its guests. These small wristbands, which incorporate
radio-frequency identi cation technology, allow visitors to enter the park, get priority access to rides, pay for
food and merchandise, and unlock their hotel rooms. But the bands also help Disney locate guests anywhere
in the park and then create customized experiences for them. Actors playing Disney characters, for example,
can personally greet guests passing by (Hey, Sophia! Happy seventh birthday!’). Disney can encourage
people to visit attractions with idle capacity (“Short lines at Space Mountain right now!”). Cameras on
various rides can automatically take photographs of guests, which Disney can use to create personalized
memory books for them, without their ever having to pose for a picture.
Similarly, instead of just selling textbooks, McGraw-Hill Education now offers customized learning
experiences. As students use the company’s electronic texts to read and do assignments, digital technologies
track their progress and feed data to their teachers and to the company. If someone is struggling with an
assignment, her teacher will nd out right away, and McGraw- Hill will direct the student to a chapter or
video offering helpful explanations. Nike, too, has gotten into the game. It can now connect with customers
daily, addressing customers’ needs the moment they arise-and sometimes even earlier. It’s a win-win:
Through what we call connected strategies, customers get a dramatically improved experience, and
companies boost operational ef ciencies and lower costs.
Consider the Magic Bands that Disney World issues all its guests. These small wristbands, which incorporate
radio-frequency identi cation technology, allow visitors to enter the park, get priority access to rides, pay for
food and merchandise, and unlock their hotel rooms. But the bands also help Disney locate guests anywhere
in the park and then create customized experiences for them. Actors playing Disney characters, for example,
can personally greet guests passing by (“Hey, Sophia! Happy seventh birthday!”). Disney can encourage
people to visit attractions with idle capacity (“Short lines at Space Mountain right now!”). Cameras on
various rides can automatically take photographs of guests, which Disney can use to create personalized
memory books for them, without their ever having to pose for a picture.
Similarly, instead of just selling textbooks, McGraw-Hill Education now offers customized learning
experiences. As students use the company’s electronic texts to read and do assignments, digital technologies
track their progress and feed data to their teachers and to the company. If someone is struggling with an
assignment, her teacher will nd out right away, and McGraw-Hill will direct the student to a chapter or
video offering helpful explanations. Nike, too, has gotten into the game. It can now connect with customers
daily, through a wellness system that includes chips embedded in shoes, software that analyzes workouts,
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Source A
It’s easy to see how Disney, McGraw-Hill, and Nike have used approaches like these to stay ahead of the
competition. Many other companies are taking steps to develop their own connected strategies by investing
substantially in data gathering and analytics. That’s great, but a lot of them are now awash in so much data
that they’re overwhelmed and struggling to cope. How can managers think clearly and systematically about
what to do next? What are the best ways to use all this new information to better connect with customers?
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and a social network that provides advice and support. That new model has allowed the company to
transform itself from a maker of athletic gear into a purveyor of health, tness, and coaching services.
Kitchen, Matthew. “How to Disconnect From ’Always On’ Work Culture.” Wall Street Journal,
Dow Jones & Company, 5 Oct. 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-disconnect-from-always-onwork-culture-1538740171.
The following is excerpted from an online article published in a national newspaper.
Today always-on is the default work setting for most of us. Ubiquitous smartphones, slim computers and
innovative apps make every response a snap-quicker, easier, seemingly less painful. It just takes a second,
right? But those rapidly accumulating seconds are just technology’s version of death by 1,000 cuts,
expanding the workday’s boundaries until it seamlessly blurs with the rest of civilian life.
According to a 2016 study by the Academy of Management, employees tally an average of 8 hours a week
answering work- related emails after leaving the of ce. Echoing that, a 2015 Harris Poll for the American
Psychological Association found that 30% of men and 23% of women regularly bring work home. Similar
percentages admitted to working on vacation and to bringing “work materials” along on social outings (we
hope they don’t mean accordion folders). All of this, many experts in psychology agree, causes stress, ruins
sleep habits and cripples our ability to stay active and engaged during actual of ce hours.
In 2017, France instituted a new labor law that supports a new frontier in human rights, the “Right to
Disconnect.” Backed by unions advocating that employees disengage from electronic work communications
once free of the of ce, the law stems from a 2004 French Supreme Court ruling af rming that an employee
who is unreachable by cell outside of work can’t be dinged for misconduct.
Similar rights have been extended in Italy and the Philippines, are being explored in Germany and
Luxembourg and were proposed in New York City. And in July, the South Korean legislation began limiting
weekly work hours to just 52, down from a max of 68. Surprise: America has no legal maximum.
“Always-on culture is weird. It’s not how humans thrive. It’s not how productive people break through to the
next level.” said Greg McKeown, author of “Essentialism,” which details his philosophy of con dently
saying no to things that don’t bene t you — a “disciplined pursuit of doing less,” but doing it better.
“Modern culture now acts upon us so constantly that we start reacting to it rather than acting for ourselves.”
Mr. McKeown argues that being selective about how we spend our time turns it into a valuable commodity to
be traded, ultimately earning you respect and making you more productive when you’re “on.” For instance,
saying no to aimless meetings frees up your of ce time to nish tasks, eliminating extra work at home. But
many of us still are burdened by FOMO — the fear of missing out, or in this case the fear of missing
opportunity, of being seen as less hardworking and less reliable than co-workers and thus expendable.
According.to a 2016 Harvard Business Review study, 43% of those surveyed “sacri ce or signi cantly
suppress other meaningful aspects of who they are” and give into always-on.
So rather than using technology to augment our work, speeding us out the door in 6 hours instead of 10, or
cutting down to an ideal four-day workweek, we’ve misused technology to bolster antiquated workaholic
habits.
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Source B

Source C
Purcell, Kristen and Lee Raine. “Technology’s Impact on Workers.” Pew Research Center: Internet
& Technology, Pew Research Center, Dec.2014, www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/12/30/
technologys-impact-on-workers/.
The following is adapted from a chart published in a report on the impact of technology on workers.
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Mazmanian, Melissa and Ingrid Erickson. “The Product of Availability: Understanding the
Economic Underpinnings of Constant Connectivity.” Proceedings of the SICCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems, Association for Computing Machinery, April 2014, doi.org/
10.1145/2556288.2557381.
The following is excerpted from a scholarly article.
Elite service professionals, such as management consultants and corporate attorneys, equate 24/7 availability
to “client service.” Lawyers are particularly articulate about the ways in which availability is sold as part of
the legal product. Mike, a partner in a corporate law rm, is straightforward about the link between access
and product:
Well you try to be as responsive as possible. It’s always been that way. We sell our time. We sell our access.
That’s what we sell. And as technology has made response times shorter, it has empowered people in a
quicker fashion. And as we are able to respond faster that’s what the marketplace for our services is going to
demand.
Asked about the relationship between productivity and accessibility, Matt, a senior partner in the same rm,
ties these two concepts under the same umbrella: if productivity is measured by keeping clients, and keeping
clients requires responsiveness, availability becomes the marker for productivity. According to Matt,
Well in a service business like ours, responsiveness equates to productivity, in that if you have a happy client
you’re going to be successful that’s the business.
This relationship is clearly one sided. Client service is exactly that—serving the client. Hillary, a partner in
the same law rm, re ects on the structurally unequal relationship between lawyers and their clients,
I have a client in Omaha who doesn’t have a cell phone, doesn’t check email. But he is very aware of the
current norms on this end. He is completely comfortable with the dichotomy that he can reach me anytime
any day and I can’t reach him. That’s his right as the client. Actually, I have several clients who have no
problem being the benefactor of current social norms. That is one of the things I have to tell Associates. They
think, “Well my client won’t mind if I don’t check my email after 6 because they don’t check theirs.” That’s
not the case. The client has entirely different standards for you than they do for themselves ...
Mark, a partner in a corporate law rm ... illuminates the ways in which accessibility, as tied to technology,
has slowly but surely become integral to what is bought and sold in the economic exchange of legal service.
The advent of email was a big deal, but it was constrained by what you could accomplish with it. It wasn’t
until you had the ability to attach documents of any given size — that fundamentally changed everything.
With FedEx you at least had 24-hour notice that you had this wagonload of documents coming in and you
could kind of plan for it. With email, now, they send them [documents] immediately, and they expect
immediate attention. And so, the mindset is that somehow you are going to be able to put down whatever
you’re doing and bring the resources to bear to do the proper analysis of those documents in a fairly rapid
period of time.
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Source D
Joyce, Connor, et al. “Positive Technology: Designing Work Environments for Digital Well-Being.”
Deloitte Review, Deloitte, 16 Apr. 2018, www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/4146
BEM-Positive-technology/DI.Positive-technology.pdf.
The following is excerpted from a professional services rm’s monthly publication.
During the day, workers are interrupted by continual streams of emails, texts, and instant messages.
Certainly, many such messages and noti cations are necessary and helpful. But many others do little more
than distract us from important tasks at hand, undermining productivity rather than enhancing it. In a widely
cited study, cognitive scientist Gloria Mark and her colleagues state that people compensate for interruptions
by working faster, but this come sat a two-fold price: The individual experiences more stress, frustration, and
time pressure and effort. Concurrently, the organization often experiences not only decreased employee
performance, but also, as elaborated in the next section, less optimal business decisions due to the lack of
adequate time to suf ciently weigh pros and cons and consider and evaluate viable alternatives.
Speci cally, constant streams of messages, prioritized in terms of importance can create cognitive scarcity,
resulting in a deterioration of the individual’s ability to adequately process information. Recent research has
found that conditions of scarcity impose a kind of “cognitive tax” on individuals ... This raises the concern
that digital rehoses of poorly ltered information can hamper our ability to pay attention, make good
decisions, and stick to plans. And when we try to compensate for interruptions by working faster, we only get
more frustrated and stressed. ...
Virtual meetings offer organizations many advantages, such as cost savings, knowledge transfer, and team
culture-building. And employees can bene t from less travel and more telecommuting opportunities. But the
very ease with which people can be invited to and accept these meetings (especially many days in advance,
when calendars are typically more open) can translate into a disadvantage. Meeting organizers often choose
to err on the side of inclusion, minimizing the risk of leaving someone out; and the average worker often
chooses to attend it for fear of missing out on something important. The all-too-common net result is a day
packed with back-to-back meetings, during which much is said, less retained, and even less achieved. This
results in either less time to complete actual tasks at hand, or multitasking, which can diminish the quality of
the meetings and the overall engagement.
Technology design that removes natural stopping points keeps the user in a state of productive inertia. This
mind-set often plays a productive role in our work life, enabling us to get into the groove and accomplishing
task after task without the inef cacy of acting to continue. Although, when we immerse ourselves in an
inconsequential task, there can also be unproductive ows. Who hasn’t lost hours reading low-priority emails
simply because they appear one after another? This is perhaps a workplace analog of the “bottomless design”
implemented in social media feeds and online entertainment platforms to capture viewers’ attention. The
natural default is to continue, not to stop.
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Source E

Source F
Hassan, Arif and Syed Ahmad Ali. “Please Respond ASAP: Constant Connectivity and
Communication Stress.” June 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
325617524_Constant_Connectivity_and_Communication_Stress
The following is adapted from a table in a scholarly article on the use of mobile technology at work.
Percentage Distribution of Respondents by the Frequency of Electronic Communication Received
after Work Hours, Their Urgency, Requirements and Actual Immediate Response
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