Posts

Williamson-Style Course Evaluation

For my final blog post, I will be conducting a Williamson-style evaluation on the course. Specifically, I will consider the two topics Professor Arvan requested be covered: Attendance and Electronics. I will discuss these topics and their effects on my behavior and what I observed from my classmates. The first mode of governance of the course was the syllabus and the attendance policy that it included. Attendance was not required, but early on there was some incentive related to attendance in the bonus survey evaluations. Personally, my attendance behavior would not have changed much if there was a stricter attendance policy in place. I attended class regularly despite the lack of requirement. I will admit that I had another class both directly before and directly after this course, so I had less reason to not attend class because I would already be out on campus and would need to be again later. Nevertheless, I would have exhibited the same behavior even if this class was the booken
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Experience with Triangle Arragements

When reflecting on my own experiences, I can come up with an example that exemplifies a triangle arrangement. During my time at the University of Illinois, one job that I have had is an Academic Tutor for the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics. In this role, I believe I had two principals for whom I acted, and thus was a part of a triangle relationship. One principal was the student with whom I was working at a given time. The student had reserved a section of time in which to use my assistance to complete homework assignments, review course topics, and prepare for exams and it was my job to assist them in the best way that I could. Yet, I had a second principal - my supervisor, the tutor coordinator, and the Academic Arm of the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics that he represented. In this relationship, I had to conform to certain time constraints to maintain the budget for tutoring services, as well as abide by various NCAA and school regulations. Fortunately, there weren
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The Michael Scott Paper Company: A Perspective on Group Dynamics and Conflict

My favorite TV show of all-time is Greg Daniels' "The Office," (the U.S. version, as opposed to the less successful U.K. version). While the series is a "mockumentary" and is intended to humor its audience, there are numerous relevant examples of group conflict in the workplace present. The episode that I will focus on is called "Michael Scott Paper Company" and is the 23rd episode of the 5th season of the show, in case you would like to view it. I will provide a brief synopsis of the series up to the point in the timeline that this specific episode takes place. Michael Scott (portrayed by Steve Carell) is the regional manager of the Scranton (Pennsylvania) branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, a small regional paper distributor. Michael is deluded, narcissistic, and inappropriate and much of the humor of the series stems from his failed attempts to successfully manage his employees. Michael's antics as a boss create uncomfortable situation
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Team Production with Gift Exchange

Each of the three NY Times articles that we read prior to starting this week's blog posts had something to do with an economic principle, such as equality, altruism, and gift exchange. The articles featured experiments or observations of people, often children, to determine how otherwise uninfluenced individuals react to certain situations. I found these articles to be interesting, and the examples to be helpful in better understanding the underlying concepts. I will briefly summarize each article before making a personal connection to some of the topics they covered. The first article, entitled "How to Get Rich to Share the Marbles," discusses the idea that a feeling of collective effort by humans leads to natural sharing of wealth. The author used an example of children playing with a toy that dispenses marbles when a collective effort is used to pull ropes that are holding the marbles back. In this example, one child earns 3 marbles while the other earns only 1. Howe
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Discussion on Managing Income Risk and Impacts of Past Choices and Decisions

The topic of managing income risk, from the perspective of a college student, is interesting because students come from a variety of financial backgrounds and face potentially very different situations when it comes to their financial futures. Some students come to college fully funded by their parents, while other incur a tremendous amount of debt via student loans. Others, and I believe this is where the majority of students fall, are somewhere in between. I think it is important to consider which category (or in between categories) a student falls because it may have affected their choices and management of future uncertainty while in college. Students who have loan debt may have been trying to work as much as possible during school to start saving or even start paying off their student loans, while others may or may not have had a similar decision making process. Without getting too personal, I am one of the people who falls somewhere in the middle of the categories I previously
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Connecting the Dots

Upon reviewing our four major blog posts up to this point and reflecting on the topics discussed in each, I think there has been one main theme underlying the posts: Opportunism. Our blog posts up to this point have asked us to draw on personal experiences in organizations, think about real world examples, and consider hypothetical situations. While not every post centered around opportunism, it is a topic that is a common feature of other topics. The ideas of transactions costs and the real world examples we have thought about all tie into the idea of opportunism. Logically, this makes sense because opportunism is often caused by scarcity, and scarcity is the underlying idea behind all of Economics. Aside from addressing the specific prompt for each post, I think that the topics generally allow me to think abstractly about the topics and try to connect my experiences with what we have discussed in class. My favorite post that I have written so far was the post in which I discussed o
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Discussion on Hypothetical "Illinibucks" System

The hypothetical idea of a campus-wide system of allocating “Illinibucks” to students is an interesting concept to ponder and yields a vast array of possibilities.   I think that the method or reason behind a specific allocation system is important to the success of the system as a whole. If the Illinibucks were incentivized as a reward (maybe based on grades or year in school), people may care more about having them and what they could be used for than if they were arbitrarily allocated to each student equally. The system would also need a way to hold incentive for each individual student no matter what their interests or needs are. If there wasn’t a good use for an individual, he may be motivated to sell his allocation of Illinibucks to another student who would choose to spend more of them. However, that may be an impossible task, as students are inevitably different from one another and have different priorities and potential uses of Illinibucks. Based on that fact, the Illinibuck
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