As I go back through my posts thus far, I see a few common themes. I did write about a couple different organizations in my first few posts. I wrote about a media company that I currently am working with and their issues with transaction costs and opportunism. I also discussed my summer work in years past and the organization of the team that the company put together. The biggest theme to take away from the posts themselves thus far is the idea of transaction costs. We see the final product of corporations, but we don't see all the interior costs that go on behind the scenes. The ideas of commitment and information come into play with those transaction costs, and they are something that seems to be in play with the class going forward.
The bigger picture with all of these posts comes down to management as a whole and the idea of identifying inefficiency in organizations. As we have discussed in class, it's more interesting to discuss the problems that arise in organizations rather than studying the well-functioning ones. Discussing transaction costs, opportunism, organization, and the idea of Illinibucks has showed me the value of good leadership and management. If a company does not have an effective leader at the top, the company can suffer in a multitude of ways. These past few posts have ultimately shown that.
As far as my process goes, I think that I have definitely evolved through the first few weeks. I actually have enjoyed talking about my own experiences and was definitely able to draw a lot on the transaction cost post. With the turmoil going on there over the summer, it really helped out my writing and let me expound on multiple parts of the issues with transaction costs. With opportunism being everywhere, it was easier to come up with examples. The same goes for the organization of teams in the following post.
However, I think it was more difficult for me to do the hypothetical. Maybe it is because I am not drawing as much from the book as I do from discussing things in class. If so, I need to put more energy into reading the books and taking away the major concepts and applying them to hypothetical situations.
Going forward, I would like to see a mix of hypothetical prompts and prompts that you can draw experiences from. I definitely like drawing from my own experiences because it lets you see the economics of an organization from your own eyes and opens them. That helps you look for the concepts and issues in organizations when you are actually in them. Hypotheticals are also good to have because they test your knowledge and application of the concepts. I am excited for this going forward.
I felt a similar way about the hypothetical prompt. I guess something we can keep in mind for future posts is that we can come up with our own prompts. You mentioned that the hypothetical prompt might have been easier to answer if you had a better understanding of the book material. I think that's a good point, and it might be worth the bit of extra effort to come up with a response. However, I also think those kinds of prompts leave a bit too much for interpretation, leading to responses missing the intended point.
ReplyDeleteLet me note that even the Illinibucks prompt expected you to draw from experience, but then it asked you to conjecture about a use that was contrary to experience. In organizations, changing the way things are done is something that happens now and then. If you as a manager are contemplating changing processes, or perhaps an entire re-org, you have to feel that this will improve performance. The mental exercise that you must go through ahead of time, in order to come to that conclusion, is something like the thinking needed to give a good response to the Illinibucks post.
ReplyDeleteAlas, I'm afraid that too often new management does this sort of thing without going through the mental exercise first, and perhaps without learning about the current organization processes. When an outsider takes over, sometimes the re-org happens to make the organization more like the one where there outsider was before, whether that makes sense or not. You will see a little later in the class, when we do B&D Chapter 8, that effective leaders are empirical in their approach and try to learn from the "boots on the ground" about what is going on. You need some imagination to learn in this way and to consider how things might otherwise be as compared to how they currently are.
I am glad that you enjoy writing about your experiences. That gives you a good base to work from. But the skill in thinking about the hypothetical is also essential, so I encourage you to put energy into future posts that are crafted that way.