The intention of this essay is to prove or refute the statement that "The use of music enhances the working environment of the IT professional-. There are two main questions that will need to be addressed in order to determine the validity of this statement. .
Can the effectual use of music in the workplace be described as a positive enforcement of a relaxing, productive and harmonious working environment, or rather, in contrast, does it produce negative effects, for example, to aggravate, annoy and distract?.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of introducing music into the workplace?.
Music has been shown in the past to help maintain a high productive workforce which is what every employer and employee endeavours to uphold. However, as past studies have generalized the findings regarding music in the workplace (a necessary procedure for scientific research), a clear understanding has not been realised as to whether music helps ALL employees to concentrate. A piece of music may be helping nine out of ten employees work, but that is to say that the other one employee is being distracted by the same music. According to a study published in 1994 in Communication Monographs, "Employees have a wide range of musical tastes - one form of music that motivates and helps one worker to concentrate may have another worker tearing out clumps of hair by day's end. Research has shown that music can reduce stress but only when the listener perceives it as relaxing-. "People make active choices regarding their music preferences and the music to which they listen. When these choices are taken away some become agitated."".
In 1972 Fox and Embrey conducted four experiments to determine whether efficiency in completing tasks was affected by background music, or a lack of. These experiments were conducted on employees working on an assembly line, however their findings can be adapted to almost any line of work.
