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Final blog post

I think that the two decisions to have non-required attendance and soft deadlines had impacts on myself and the class as a whole, both direct and indirect. Making attendance not required is almost guaranteed to change how certain students approach the class. For me personally, the decision to not have required attendance allowed outside circumstances (job interviews, meetings/appointments, etc.) to have a greater impact in my decision to attend. If attendance were required (therefore impacting my grade in the class), I would have had to plan these outside commitments around the 9:30-10:50 a.m. time slot. Since my schedule is already pretty full with my on-campus job, if it was convenient for me (and for the other party – i.e, those who were interviewing me) I would tend not to reschedule if they selected a time that overlapped with our class. This happened on a couple occasions, but I always made an effort to let you know beforehand. From the class perspective, obviously not having r
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Agent/Triangle relationship

This is an interesting situation to analyze, and I had the opportunity to witness (albeit in a minor form) a minor version of a triangle relationship during my internship this summer. It may not fit the mold exactly, but the relationship provides similar actions to the standard triangle-agent relationship we have discussed. I worked as an intern for a major institutional investor in Chicago. The office is run by the CIO, who has an obligation to manage the portfolio in the best of her ability. She also had to abide by recommendations by the institution’s board of directors, and it was possible that the two parties wouldn’t see eye to eye. So the CIO acts as the agent, and the two principals being the external fund managers in the portfolio and the board of directors of the employing institution. The CIO and the rest of the senior staff met regularly with external fund managers, prospective or current, and then would (less frequently) meet with the board of directors to present the st
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Conflict and Group Dynamics

This conflict occurred in a work situation, although this time it was not between myself and a co-worker. Back working at the pool (the place I have been talking about in previous posts), I also was a swim coach. The club I worked at competed in a small, semi-competitive swim league that consisted of five other clubs from around the northern/western suburbs. I say semi-competitive because ultimately, we don’t care about winning and just want the kids to have fun, but there are two competitive championship meets at the end of the season where awards are given out. Some clubs (us, for example) didn’t really care about winning any of these awards, while others (usually those who have the better swimmers) will actively try to win these championship meets. Anyway, just for some background before I describe the conflict, I was the oldest coach (besides the head coach, who was also the club manager Matt), so I was viewed as the “senior” coach since I was the oldest and had been coaching
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Discipline and Punishment Severity

It may be true that “draconian” punishments harden an individual. Those kinds of punishments, in most cases, tend to make the individual more severe and less sympathetic afterwards. When I think of these kinds of punishments, I immediately think of sports coaches. In that context, they have the goal of strengthening individuals, more so mentally than physically, and they (the coaches) gain from having the individuals (the players) having less sympathy as it helps them reach their objective – winning the game/contest/whatever they’re competing in. But in most contexts (work, group activities, etc), especially if the main goal is to strengthen the relationship and increase productivity, harsh punishments may not be the way to go. I’m thinking that draconian punishments are more of a short-term band aid to increase imminent production, but long-term it probably does more harm than help in terms of strengthening relationships and building mutual productivity and respect. I think that p
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Team production and the Collaboration Issue

I was immediately fascinated by the experiments that were done to assess the mindset of society when it comes to egalitarianism and general moral well-being. I was shocked at how these qualities are developed so early, and that they persist and are still present in most (if not all) adults today. The experiments in the first article made sense. Without altering the experiment, there was a strong sense of an egalitarian attitude, as they equalized the wealth 75% of the time. But when the conditions were altered, that mentality dwindled and the children didn’t feel any sense of collaboration. I found the collaboration aspect interesting, and the question of “Do Americans view the economy as a collaborative project” was interesting to think about. I have a feeling that when times were more adverse and the country (as a whole) faced some level of threat (the great depression, either world war, the cold war, etc.), society viewed the economy and the fiscal world as more of a group effort.
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Managing Risk

I think its interesting to analyze decisions in this fashion, debating whether it was for future risk protection or current utilization.   There are a couple decisions that I can turn to and take the current circumstances and future effects into consideration. Most notable is the collective decision to accumulate some student debt. I say collective because it was not a completely independent decision, I had the help of my parents. It initially seems like a choice being made because it seems good at the time, as I would not have to commit as much financially in the current year (and the couple years after). But, the intention all along was to be able to take advantage of financial aid opportunities to decrease the financial burden in the five or ten years after I graduate. So the financial aid discussion was definitely a long-term approach. In terms of the choice of college, that was more of a choice that sounded and seemed good at that time. This is in no way saying it was a bad choi
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Connecting the Dots

This was an interesting exercise, seeing how not only my writing has changed, but how the content of the blog posts have changed over these first seven weeks of the semester. Re-reading my prior posts, there were definitely some themes that were present throughout multiple posts (or at least themes that should have been evident, based on the prompts). A theme that seemed to reappeared seemed to be costs, and how they mattered in the context of the prompt. Transaction costs were discussed in the organizational change post, and the costs of taking advantage of certain circumstances were present in the opportunism post. On a smaller scale, there was some talk of costs in the Illinibucks context, maybe in more of an opportunity cost format (the next-best alternative to using Illinibucks for a certain function). For me personally, the connections were clearer after I read your responses to the post. Whether it was me not understanding a concept or connecting the dots the wrong way, I
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