Team production

The way I think team production and gift exchange applies most to my life is when I participate in group projects. Group projects are often assigned to use your knowledge and other team members’ to share knowledge and expertise equally and split the work down the middle, which creates a better end result for the project. Sounds like a great idea in theory, much like the idea of sharing the marbles in Jonathan Haidt’s article. Ideally, the people who do more work in a group project reap more of the benefits just like Haidt suggests in his article in regards to the marbles, but unfortunately, as I have experienced, that is not how it always works out.

I never realized there was a term to describe the team member who does less work and gets the credit until I took an AP Psychology class in high school. The term is “social loafing”, and it is the urge we get to do less work when we know we can get the benefits regardless of how much work we put in. There are ways to combat this issue in group projects, as I have had  some teachers who have allowed for us to grade our team members anonymously so they can know if some kids are not doing the same amount of work. Ideas like these help eliminate social loafing, but it is still inevitable in some other situations.

Perhaps teachers instituting ways to grade team members in group projects helps eliminate social loafing, but I have experienced it on sports teams as well. When I was in 8th grade, my baseball team won our championship. We were all ecstatic, but we had one team member who showed up to few practices and wasn’t involved in most of our wins. However, he still came to our team party and received a championship trophy like the rest of us. He gets to call himself a champion, but he really loafed through the entire season. At the end of the day, all he cared about was being able to say he won a championship, so the payoff still worked out in his favor.

I am not saying I think this way, but some people want to look back at their lives nd see what they have accrued as opposed to what they have done along the way. They are unconcerned with the hard work that goes into getting straight A’s or winning a sports championship or making lots of money, they just want to be able to brag about what they have accomplished. In the marble scenario, both parties are equally concerned with the work they put into something and what they get out. I think this is unrealistic, because some people will be much more concerned with what they get out than what they put in.

I think about half the time, teams have members who are good people care about the work that goes into an A or the practices that go into winning. In these cases, the success at the end is sweeter, because everyone involved really cared about the project or season. The other half of the time, the people who have to do more work end up being slightly bitter at the end even though they experienced success. This relates to the economy because at the end of the day, everyone is out for themselves. In the workplace, people will do less work if they know they get the same payday at the end of the week. This can cause anything from the downfall of a small project or an entire business. 

Income risk

My decisions are usually made with my future in mind especially regarding my education.  There is almost a direct correlation to academic success in college and future salary so that is why I make my current decisions with my future in mind to mitigate income risk.  As I said, academic success is the easiest way to reduce future income risk and that is why I have kept my GPA at high level throughout my college career.  This shows future employers you have a good work ethic especially coming from the University of Illinois which is always highly ranked amongst public universities.  The combination of having a high GPA from a top school really puts myself ahead of other applicants with lesser credentials when applying for internships this summer because companies know I earned these good grades while taking a more rigorous work load than applicants from other schools.  I also need to maintain a high GPA to qualify for certain financial aid and scholarships which save me tens of thousands of dollars each semester. 

I am an Economics major here on campus and chose that for a few different reasons.  I came to campus as a MCB major with intentions to go to medical school after.  However, quickly into first semester freshmen year I realized the medical field was not what I was truly interested and the cost of four years of medical school would have put me in a giant financial hole.  I made the switch to economics because I saw that a career in the business world was more fitting for my personable personality and hard work ethic.  I decided to join economics instead of trying to transfer to the business school because I was already in LAS so it was a simpler process to change to econ instead of transferring.   I apply for a lot of the same jobs and internships as the business students and I believe I am a viable candidate for these positions with my economics background because economics has taught me to think logically and thoroughly through every situation am I faced with.  This is critical in the business world because every problem you are faced with is not going to have a cookie cutter solution and you will have to work out the situation logically.  Also work experience is very important and I have had a job with a logistics company the past summers which has put me in contact with companies such as Wrigley and other logistics companies for future employment.  In fact, I am in the interview process for an internship this summer with a larger logistics company in downtown Chicago that I got set up with through my summer job and fraternity members.  These work experiences have lowered my future income risk because they are giving me a better opportunity to be hired by a reputable company than if I did not have these work experiences.  It also has given me good knowledge in the field of logistics and supply chain management which I can use to talk to recruiters and interviewers during interviews. 

Other experiences outside of internships are very helpful to your future success as well.  I am apart of a social fraternity on campus which has provided me so many experiences, connections, and has taught me lessons that will help me tenfold in life.  Companies look at other things than your GPA during the hiring process and a majority of it comes from the interview.  You have to be a good communicator and personable in business because almost all your interactions are working with other people.  Companies always tell you about their culture and the environment of their office/work place usually boasting about how the office has “competitive” or “energetic” atmosphere with frequent company outings (at least for the companies I have worked and applied to).  Due to this, recruiters want to hire someone that is qualified for the job and will also fit in with other employees; thus, the person with the highest GPA will not always get the job because they could be lacking social skills the company seeks.  Being a recruitment chair for my fraternity has taught me very important social and communication skills that I can now apply to interviews or preinterview meet and greets.    

I have an older that just graduated from DePaul’s business school and accepted his job offer from Tesla.  He said to be patient and not jump at the first offer because it might seem like a good choice for the moment but not the right choice for the future.  My brother turned down offers from Bridgestone tire that had a higher starting salary than Tesla but did not provide stock options nor did he see potential growth in the company down the line. 

Connecting the dots

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.