But this paper is about that first one. I’ll explain why companies would want an office sans paper. I’ll also talk about why this might not be such a great idea and possible negative side effects from paperless offices. Finally, I’ll discuss just why this might not be as difficult to achieve (at least legally and physically) as it might seem.

The article - Paperless Office: A New Proposal for Organizations is about the challenges and obstacles that stand in the way of a paperless office.  It explains why virtually every company would want a paperless office, - the money saved on paper and printer ink, for starters, as well as the convenience of digital communication methods and digital storage methods as opposed to having to store literal tons of paper. The environmental effect is good as well – the image of a paperless office extends to the business itself. But the challenges that stand in the way are many – technophobic employees who never got their VCR to stop flashing “12:00” need to be taught to use the new systems, the accounting department is going to hit the roof when they see the bill for the new systems, and even the IT department is going to have a LOT of work installing said new systems. These organizational challenges need to be reasonably overcome if a paperless office is to be realized.
Following the same theme, a paperless office would be a boon to higher education as well as the workplace. iPads and the paperless office helped me realize why my tablet came with Microsoft word and excel preinstalled on it – they are now powerful enough that they can be used for assignments in higher education (like this one!) and help cut down on paperwork. But a lot of students and employees in the workplace don’t know how to use them to their full potential, and this article goes into suggestions for how to train them to use the tablet hardware properly and avoid using the traditional dead trees to print their assignment. This applies in the workplace as well, as management can read more and more reports in sequence on a computer screen or tablet in a far more efficient manner than they could go through physical stacks of paperwork. The article targets higher education as it is a traditionally a paper guzzler – all those higher education assignments requiring numerous pages that are written by numerous students lead to a massive pile of papers on the instructor’s desk every day. This means that colleges will see a particularly large benefit by going paperless.
