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 opportunism on the interstate highway system around Chicago. I enjoyed thinking about opportunism in a form that wasn't discussed in class, but that related nonetheless. The problem of highway driving opportunism was one that I thought about frequently while driving to and from work over the summer, and it was interesting to put more thought into the issue in a more formal setting.
Furthermore, the post in which we discussed team structure and the qualities of successful teams/teammates allowed me to think about connections to class topics even outside of the prompt. While I discussed my experience as a part of a student organization on campus, I also thought outside of the prompt. The ideas discussed by B&D and what we discussed in class about the organizational structure of teams was something that I was able to connect to other experiences and future experiences. I thought about how I would organize teams at past work experiences if I had been in charge to make them more successful, and also about how I hope my future places of employment handle team structure. I think these ideas are more obvious to me after we discussed them than at the time of writing that particular blog post and it could've been improved on if I had put in a little more thought before hand.
Generally, I don't think my process for writing the blog posts has changed much since the start of the semester. My process is usually to read the prompt a day or two before actually writing it, to start the process of prewriting. For me, it is beneficial to have an idea of what I will have to write about and think about it in the background of my other tasks and happenings throughout the week. I heard once that some renowned physicist or scientist would perform manual labor when stuck on a difficult problem to think about it in the background while performing the menial work. I think this approach is great for a lot of things, but especially when trying to come up with something to write about. I think that there have been some weeks where I am a little bit more pressed for time and don't start the prewriting early enough. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I will start the process earlier in the week which I believe will help me tie the blog post into the topics covered in class for that week.
Thinking about future blog post topics, I would like to see more prompts that allow us to think about abstract or hypothetical scenarios. I enjoyed the blog post about Illinibucks because it allowed us to think outside the box and try to relate the scenario to the idea of transaction costs that we had been talking about in class. I don't like as much the topics that ask us to draw on our own experiences in organizations. I think that the organizations that most of us are a part of are flawed in terms of analyzing their structure or opportunism within them. I assume that most people have talked about an organization or fraternity/sorority they are a part of on campus. While student organizations are generally beneficial to be a part of, I don't think they always mirror the characteristics of organizations such as those we will one day work for full-time. In any student organization, most of the members aren't going to be as committed as they would be to a full-time job. The campus organization takes a secondary priority to keeping up with classwork, working a paid job, or having a social life. Because students are not paid in organizations, they are less likely to be committed to that organization. Thus, opportunism and the free rider problem is much more prevalent than it would be in the workplace. The other major experience people have probably drawn from is internships or part-time jobs. Due to internships being very short term, I think it is difficult to judge organizational structure from those experiences. That is just my two cents, but I think it is more beneficial to analyze ambiguous or hypothetical situations rather than our own experiences, although it is good to think about how the topics can be related to our personal experiences in various organizations. Personally, I gained more from the Illinibucks post or the post that asked us to think about opportunism in real life than some of the "own experience" posts.
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 opportunism on the interstate highway system around Chicago. I enjoyed thinking about opportunism in a form that wasn't discussed in class, but that related nonetheless. The problem of highway driving opportunism was one that I thought about frequently while driving to and from work over the summer, and it was interesting to put more thought into the issue in a more formal setting.
Furthermore, the post in which we discussed team structure and the qualities of successful teams/teammates allowed me to think about connections to class topics even outside of the prompt. While I discussed my experience as a part of a student organization on campus, I also thought outside of the prompt. The ideas discussed by B&D and what we discussed in class about the organizational structure of teams was something that I was able to connect to other experiences and future experiences. I thought about how I would organize teams at past work experiences if I had been in charge to make them more successful, and also about how I hope my future places of employment handle team structure. I think these ideas are more obvious to me after we discussed them than at the time of writing that particular blog post and it could've been improved on if I had put in a little more thought before hand.
Generally, I don't think my process for writing the blog posts has changed much since the start of the semester. My process is usually to read the prompt a day or two before actually writing it, to start the process of prewriting. For me, it is beneficial to have an idea of what I will have to write about and think about it in the background of my other tasks and happenings throughout the week. I heard once that some renowned physicist or scientist would perform manual labor when stuck on a difficult problem to think about it in the background while performing the menial work. I think this approach is great for a lot of things, but especially when trying to come up with something to write about. I think that there have been some weeks where I am a little bit more pressed for time and don't start the prewriting early enough. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I will start the process earlier in the week which I believe will help me tie the blog post into the topics covered in class for that week.
Thinking about future blog post topics, I would like to see more prompts that allow us to think about abstract or hypothetical scenarios. I enjoyed the blog post about Illinibucks because it allowed us to think outside the box and try to relate the scenario to the idea of transaction costs that we had been talking about in class. I don't like as much the topics that ask us to draw on our own experiences in organizations. I think that the organizations that most of us are a part of are flawed in terms of analyzing their structure or opportunism within them. I assume that most people have talked about an organization or fraternity/sorority they are a part of on campus. While student organizations are generally beneficial to be a part of, I don't think they always mirror the characteristics of organizations such as those we will one day work for full-time. In any student organization, most of the members aren't going to be as committed as they would be to a full-time job. The campus organization takes a secondary priority to keeping up with classwork, working a paid job, or having a social life. Because students are not paid in organizations, they are less likely to be committed to that organization. Thus, opportunism and the free rider problem is much more prevalent than it would be in the workplace. The other major experience people have probably drawn from is internships or part-time jobs. Due to internships being very short term, I think it is difficult to judge organizational structure from those experiences. That is just my two cents, but I think it is more beneficial to analyze ambiguous or hypothetical situations rather than our own experiences, although it is good to think about how the topics can be related to our personal experiences in various organizations. Personally, I gained more from the Illinibucks post or the post that asked us to think about opportunism in real life than some of the "own experience" posts.
In your first paragraph, you didn't tackle the 800 pound gorilla. Economics is about scarcity, sure. In the presence of scarcity, do we stop being moral people? If we are moral people, do we behave opportunistically?
ReplyDeleteI may have said in class that I don't like the driving example, because it is an area where even in my own behavior it is pretty much guided by straight cost-benefit calculations, not by ethical considerations. So I think it less interesting than to consider cases where the ethical considerations matter more.
I wish you had blogged about some of your thoughts that you entertained but didn't write about. How you might have organized a team and for what reasons - that would be interesting to read. Perhaps you can still fit it in for a latter post, as we will consider team production and the consequences of that.
Regarding what you wrote in the last paragraph, another student said something similar. I commented on her post that an important life skill is coming up with good questions. I then asked where do those good questions come from? You wrote elsewhere about the benefits of pre-writing. You might consider part of that as developing your own off-the-wall scenarios to analyze. It gets at the so-called what if? Doing that takes time, but it also can be fun and engaging. I understand the issue with juggling your other responsibilities. But if you have some time to try this, you might find it rewarding to do.
That scarcity is the underlying idea of all Economics might be a too hasty conclusion without evidence, but I do like that you mention it in the first paragraph. Furthermore, I did like your post about the team structure and it's good to see that you thought outside the prompt in this post. I also want to do this more in my future posts and you should continue doing this.
ReplyDeleteI believe that we, as students, can get most out of this course if we connect the topics mentions in class to our writings. Moreover, it also helps to go deeper in the material and writing the blog would be easier. I still find it hard to connect my blog to topics we discusses in class (excluding the prompt), but your tip of starting earlier in the week is a good one. I agree with you on this and I'm going to do the same.
Your last paragraph is interesting. I also think that hypothetical scenarios in future posts would be good, however I believe that the 'own experience' posts are also a good way to think about organizations. Because we are not restricted to the prompt, we can also write about experiences that for example our parents had with their work or whatever. I believe that thinking about your own experience of organizations is not less beneficial than writing about hypothetical scenarios, however this differs from person to person. I think that there should be a balance between both in the blog post in the future. However, I also wrote about my fear that my own experience of organizations will be 'empty' in the future, because we, as students, don't have that much experiences. So future posts should maybe give 2 options to write about: own experience and hypothetical. The team structure posts is a good example of this, because in this post we could also write about teams which performed well based on movies or something.