1) I will discount the first two posts I made because one was a test post and another was a short history/biography of my assigned economist Ben Bernanke. The following four posts: transaction costs, opportunism, teams, and Illinibucks are the remaining ones of note.
*also would like to write apologies for doing this late, I was at a wedding this weekend and got back last night*
It is obvious that all the posts (besides the first 2) are related to decision making and the dynamics of making decisions as an individual or in a group setting. My first post I wrote about the transaction costs I had to make while inside an organization (where in this case) I was employed at. The second post was about any opportunistic behavior I did/ did not take advantage of while in an organization. Both posts were related to my previous work experiences at my logistics internship. The second two posts about teams and Illinibucks can be slightly related because they are both looking at a more macro-level of how organizations work. My teams posts was about another previous job I had and the chain of management that was employed there. The Iliinibucks post was about an idea for Iliinibucks and how/ what type of organizations would be able/ willing to try an implement such a system.
2) Not exactly what I wrote about in my post but at one of my previous jobs the system of matching up interns with their mentors for the summer was very similar to the hospital matching examples from homework. Interns would go on mini-shadow opportunities in the first few days on the job and talk to many full time employees in different positions. The interns would then rate (not the person) but the job roles they shadowed in an order of preference. The recruiters would then go through and match up the interns and mentors into different roles/ geographical focuses- attempting their best to try and give everyone their top preference.
3) My process for writing these posts has not really evolved at all from the beginning. Besides from my first two posts which were very short in length, nothing has changed that much. I still read the prompt a few times and think about what I am going to write for a few minutes before I start writing into blogger. If I get stuck at any part or feel as if I am now elaborating my thoughts well enough I will frequently glance at other students posts to try and gauge how I should write the rest of mine.
4) I think the posts so far have been relevant to the course material. The only thing I can think of is initially make groups at the beginning of the semester and have very concrete guidelines on how the commenting on group members posts should go. This is to hopefully avoid confusion on expectations on the blogging at to make it easier to grade for yourself Prof. Arvan. As far as future post expectations I think the formula for the posts you have been using so far is working very well and the posts are relevant to course material. I will say however I believe if you had hard deadlines every Sunday night rather than Friday at 6pm more students would do it ontime. I realize this would mean my current post would still be late which I accept responsibility for. However I will say I, along with a good amount of other students in this course I assume, do a majority of schoolwork on Sundays. Also a good amount of students start enjoying campus nightlife starting on Thursday night- mkaing the Friday night due date a bit hard for some students to make. A hard Sunday night deadline could make it much easier and transparent for students to finish posts and to see which students are actually doing them.
This is another post which, while you did it this morning, is only showing up in my reader now, Monday afternoon at 4:30.
ReplyDeleteApart from that, I wonder if you can make better connections across the posts - not about your experiences but about the economics we are studying. I really didn't see you try to make any connection that way at all. So you got little value out of doing this exercise other than some credit for doing it.
Well the first post is about transaction costs and it obviously overlays the successive posts (I am not sure up to which post yet as we are still doing them). Describing myself in an organization and the potential transaction costs I had incurred ties perfectly into the second post about opportunism. Transaction costs stop opportunism--> ex. Im searching for a car- I have search costs looking, and bargaining costs once I believe I have found a nice used one. The opportunistic behavior comes in on the part of the seller where he could withhold any information about the car- such as the carburetor is broken or the rear axel is too low. Here is where transaction costs come in- I have him sign some contract certifying that the car is in good condition to deter him from withholding information from me. So there has to be some ethical scenario at play.
ReplyDeleteThe third post dealing with (successful) teams and organization structure obviously ties transaction costs and opportunistic behavior depending on the scenario being described. The goal is for successful teams to act opportunistically while circumventing transaction costs in a legal/ non ethical way. Certain types of team composition of leadership (managerial styles) can potentially help accomplish this goal.
The final post relating to transfer pricing. Depending on the described scenario a student could easily tie all their 4 posts into one if their organization offered something where there was transfer pricing going on in their market. I will say I cannot elaborate on the transfer pricing post as well as I do not fully comprehend it to be able to write a significant post.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteYour post was good but you could have gone into a little more details about the connections as you did a little more in your reply to the professor.
Transaction costs and opportunism were good themes to have back to back weeks because they easily tie together. I also wrote about a similar topic in my transaction costs post as my opportunism post and did not realize the connection of the two until we had to do this exercise. The successful teams post sums up the previous two posts because once you learn how to minimize transaction costs which allows you to act opportunistically, those are 2 very important factors when trying to have a successful team.