Connecting the Dots:
Reflecting back on my posts I can see connections between a
lot of them. This is because some of the
prompts have had related themes and that can be seen in the content of my
blogs. One theme that reoccurred in my blogs
was the importance of efficiency within a team.
I talked about the logistics
company I worked for for the past two summers and the importance of efficient teamwork
in order to be a successful company.
There were 2 different sectors of the company (warehouse and office) and
it was imperative that the two worked in perfect unison to maximize profits for
the company. My job was essentially to
be the glue in between the warehouse and office so I saw firsthand and was
responsible for how well the two teams worked together. Making sure both the warehouse manager and
office manager were on the same page and holding all work up to the standards
of each manager was what I had to do to make sure the company was working as
efficiently as possible. When there was a miscommunication from the office to
the warehouse is when biggest problems happened because orders get rejected
which is very costly.
Another place that efficiency was shown in my blogs was with
illinibucks. Being able to use illinibucks
at career fairs will allow students to be much more efficient at these
events. Students can budget out their
illinibucks so they can skip long lines at the career fair thus maximizing the
amount of companies they can network with.
There are many connections relating my posts to themes we
discuss in class. Each prompt is based
off the topics we discuss in class in terms of organizations and some of those
topics we learn about after we were assigned the prompt. I think this is an interesting way to go
about it because this way you can formulate your own questions on the purpose
of the prompt and then those questions are answered later in class. Along with this assignment, I think it is
beneficial to reflect back on previous assignments and topics because then you
can fully encompass the purpose of each one. The best example I can think of is the
opportunistic prompt that was assigned a few weeks ago. When I first saw the prompt I was surprised
to see that we were supposed to write about a time that we failed to capitalize
on an opportunity because the majority of the class was directed at capitalizing
on opportunities. However, I connected
that to when we discussed how organizations are always looking to take every
opportunity they can to achieve economic success. I then connected that to transaction costs;
organizations do anything in order to maximize their personal profit but
transaction costs deter anyone from getting screwed over due to those
decisions.
I have evolved my posts in many ways. I started off having blogs with shorter word
counts and I realized that I was not fully explaining certain aspects of the
prompt which in turn hurt my posts. Especially
after this blog which has made me reflect on the class as a whole, I will
continue to fully explain every aspect of the prompt and begin to connect the
prompt to old posts and themes we discuss in class. With these additions to blogs I think the
content of my blog will drastically improve which will result in better
conservations started from my group members’ comments.
Lastly, I do not have a lot of experience writing my own
prompts especially because this class in very different from other econ classes
I have taken. However, I think the style
of the prompts we have been provided is very good. The prompts are broad enough to have multiple
different responses from every student but specific enough to relate it to a
topic we discussed in class. Also
allowing us to write about our personal experiences it is interesting to see
how other student’s experiences compare to my own.
I am not sure you got it in the paragraph where you wrote about opportunism. At the very end you did talk about the possibility of getting screwed over, and what it takes to avoid that. But the ethical dimension was not there in what you said leading into that. With opportunism it is there throughout. Transaction costs are incurred to thwart opportunism. Successful teams do this, somehow.
ReplyDeleteI hope to see continued improvement in the blogging. It is one important way for you to learn in our class.
Professor sorry for the late reply,
DeleteThank you for commenting on the progress of my posts.
The 3 posts in a row about transaction costs, opportunism, and succesful teams are the posts with the most clear connections. I realized that I wrote about similar topics in all 3 posts after this assignment and now I am connecting the dots between why that happened. Once you learn how to minimize transaction costs is when you can begin to act opportunistically and once a team is acting opportunistically, with minimal transaction costs, is when the team will be successful.
John,
ReplyDeleteGreat post, I can fully relate to your experiences with working within a logistics company. I agree with Prof. Arvan however when it comes to the opportunistic paragraph. *this is obviously an extreme example* But imagine a power company who burns coal wants to power 5 towns in its area. 1 transaction cost it has is the amount of co2 the company is allowed to burn per day and then per year- making them have to plan out when/ when not to have the turbines firing. If they go over the allotted amount then they are fined by the EPA. Then The second opportunistic cost is the more coal they burn the more waste they will have to dispose of. Since the waste management company can only take 'x' amount per week they cannot generate more power than the waste it will create to be safely taken away. So now they have a dilemma in the winter, as a corporation they would want to burn as much coal as possible to take advantage of people wanting to heat their homes in the cold. However, they have to abide by the amount the can burn per week plus they cannot burn too much and create too much waste. In absence of another waste management company (well say it doesnt exist here) the power plant will only be able to power 4/5 towns around it due to the costs of being fined and costs of the waste management. They could act opportunistically and just not listen to the EPA or just dispose of the waste 'irresponsibly' in a dump nearby- but both behaviors are viewed as unethical and have high social/ethical/monetary punishments associated with them.