Opportunism in the Workplace

It does take a decent amount of discipline to not act opportunistically. It may seem rather easy to take advantage of circumstances without regarding any sort of principles or consequences. As the prompt states, being a good citizen, realizing the unethical implications, or having patience as a virtue can all be reasons why people don’t engage in opportunism. Opportunism is also driven by self-interest, so people who don’t hold others in high regard may be more susceptible to taking advantage of certain circumstances. When self-interest is involved, people may not even be thinking of others when taking advantage and acting opportunistically, but their actions inadvertently cause some scale of harm to other individuals.

I will give two examples, because this first one does not need to be analyzed as much in detail, but is a simple example of opportunism (and lack thereof) in action. Driving back to school on I-57 south towards Champaign can result in some merging down into one lane. About a half-mile before the merge actually occurs, cars would begin consolidating into one lane, to avoid having to do so right at the merging point. My mom, who was doing the driving, would always get upset at cars that would speed down the lane that was closing, just to pass as many cars as possible before moving to one lane. She had many chances to join those cars and try to pass as many people as possible, knowing that doing so would create extra backup and would elongate the merging process – a large inconvenience to everybody who was patiently waiting. My mom is definitely considered a “good citizen” (a better one than myself, at least), and patience is definitely a strong virtue of hers. Albeit a simple example, but her values and respect for others in a similar situation are reasons why she will rarely act opportunistically, especially if others will be affected in any sort of negative way.

Since there’s not too much to speculate about her decision or reasoning, a different example of not acting opportunistically comes from my summer job that I talked about in my last blog, being an Assistant Manager at the pool and tennis club in my hometown. The management team consisted of Mike, the club manager, and two assistant managers, one being myself. For a little more context, it helps to know that when we were both promoted to the Assistant Manager position, there was no written contract/job description/statement of responsibilities that we were forced to adhere to. This made it easier to take advantage of circumstances as they arose, since there was no specific method to handling any situation; Mike had confidence in us to use good judgement and represent his mission, as well as the club’s mission, when interacting with members and/or staff. An opportunity arose when I could have taken full control of the scheduling, which would have allowed my to create a schedule that demonstrated (not to others’ knowledge, however) my personal bias towards some of the lifeguards. For example, if I knew I was working in the afternoon one day, I would have been able to schedule lifeguards that I liked more than others or those that I perceived as better employees. What made the possibility intriguing is that I could have done this and my method would not have been noticed, as nobody really looks into how the schedule is created or what the thought process is behind it.

I ended up handing the scheduling duties off to the other Assistant Manager. The main reason being that I did not trust myself to complete this task (scheduling) regularly without letting personal bias interfere with the decision-making process. The right way to do it is to take into account the lifeguard’s conflicts (making sure not to schedule them if they’re out of town), as well as put together a good mix of new lifeguards with older, more experienced ones. Also important is identifying groups of people who work well together and those that don’t. I cannot say that I would have stuck to those principles all of the time. Letting personal bias interfere with this job would have been unethical, and it would not have been fair to some of the lifeguards who have no control over the schedule. Additionally, I would have felt guilty in that I was not doing my job properly, or letting Mike down in any way. So my reasoning comes from two sources – being fair to the staff and not going behind my superior’s back.  Whenever situations would come along that gave me an opportunity to take action completely out of self-interest, I did my best to understand the consequences of any action, both positive and negative. Since opportunism is utilized without regard to planning or principle, I tried to show some patience and understand as many potential consequences that would arise from any decision or action I would take. It seems to have worked so far.