There were a couple of articles last week on Foxnews.com about the supposedly addictive nature of the wireless handheld device, the Blackberry, which has been dubbed by some as the “Crackberry”.
“BlackBerry ‘Addicts’ Argue Devices Have Changed Lives” belied the device’s nickname – “infamously addictive” according to a write-up at Wikipedia “because of the ability to read e-mail that is received in realtime, anywhere” – and the description of its users as yet another group of “addicts”, by citing a study by the executive recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International that found three-quarters of 2,000 executives interviewed worldwide “said they believe mobile communication devices primarily enhance their work/life balance rather than impede it.”
Meanwhile, in a companion piece (“Professor: BlackBerry Addiction Lawsuits Likely in Future“) published on the same day, Gayle Porter, associate professor of management at the Rutgers University School of Business in Camden, New Jersey, who co-authored a paper on the subject, was quoted as claiming that “workers whose personal lives suffer as a result of tech addictions could turn their sights on their employers”, by suing them for their – as the writer of the article put it – “technology dependence”.
The rationale? As Porter was quoted elsewhere as saying:
If people work longer hours for personal enrichment, they assume the risk. However, if an employer manipulates an individual’s propensity toward workaholism or technology addiction for the employer’s benefit, the legal perspective shifts. When professional advancement (or even survival) seems to depend on 24/7 connectivity, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between choice and manipulation.
And there’s the rub. Firstly, who decides when this supposed line has been crossed? In this increasingly litigious age, the line can often be blurry between the facts and the monetary aims of complainants (and trial lawyers).
Secondly, if someone has a “propensity toward workaholism or technology addiction”, why is this manipulation? Isn’t there an argument that the particular workers themselves – those who came into the job as “workaholics” – would find other means to do so anyway?
But maybe I’m wrong. Life at the top is competitive. Perhaps those high-flyers who got so far didn’t really do so out of choice, inclination and their nature, but because of external factors way beyond their capability to just “say no”.
