When it comes to the concept of opportunism, it shows up in areas where we all wouldn't think it would. Opportunism is defined as achieving some sort of gain at the expense of others. Those effects can be social and even monetary.
I have previously discussed my opportunity to write for this website called cover32. I discussed a lot about transaction costs and the issues with that last week. However, opportunism also exists in this company, and that opportunism contributed to the management change.
The top management, which included the owner and editor-in-chief, put a system in place where the team editors would receive revenue. However, a condition was placed in that revenue that the editors (including myself) did not know about. The checks would be cut to editors once their revenue gained for the site surpassed 100 dollars.
There was also a catch involved. While the revenue was certainly based on clicks, the amount of clicks needed to reach a substantial amount of revenue per month was nearly impossible to reach. So, while the top of management received a good amount for the work we did, we weren't receiving any money. The appointed national co-editors even relayed to me that the way the system was set up, no one was really going to reach that total and ever get paid. This act by the very top to implement a system to taking in revenue without compensating editors is an act of opportunism. It hurts the editors in that they aren't getting any piece of the revenue pie they are working for.
There are a couple other examples of opportunism in this company. The national writing team (assembled over the summer) had a bunch of assignments to keep the football interest going. One of the people in this group used resources as a part of opportunism. He plagiarized a post from somewhere else for a summer assignment. That opportunism exploited the hard work of another and hurt the reputation of our website all for personal gain.
Another potential opportunity for this exists for us editors every day. Every editor has writers under them, which gives them a sort of power. Since the editors receive emails from writers and put them on to the website, it would be easy for the editors to pass off the work as their own to gain power and potentially move up in the company. Luckily, that type of opportunistic actions has not occurred since I have been on staff.
Since this sort of relates to what we cover at the site, I wanted to also talk about this event as opportunistic. As those who follow the NFL know, Hurricane Irma brought flooding and wind damage to the state of Florida. It did so during week one of the NFL season. The issue with the hurricane was that the Buccaneers and Dolphins were supposed to play in Miami during that first week. With the path of the storm known before landfall, the NFL had options. They could play the game before the scheduled time, or they could move the game to a neutral site and play there. Many options were open for a relocated game, such as Atlanta and Charlotte, as the Falcons and Panthers were both on the road to start their seasons. Instead of moving the game to a neutral site, the NFL decided to move the game to week 11, since both the Bucs and Dolphins had a bye then.
This action has multiple consequences and perfectly displays opportunism. The first question is where the gain lies in doing this. If the NFL were to relocate to a neutral site, they would need to sell tickets. The tickets would most likely have come at a lower price than where the game was originally scheduled, which would decrease revenue for that game. The other big issue relies in player safety. Player safety has been an important subject for the NFL recently, but it clearly didn't matter in this decision. Now, the Dolphins and Bucs both have to play 16 games in a row. Playing that many in a row without a bye dramatically increases the risk for injury, and puts a major dent in the player safety that has been pushed lately. The opportunistic actions here clearly reside in the decision of the owners in that they wanted the full revenue from that game, and are willing to sacrifice player safety for that money.
The closer we look, the more we can see opportunism all around us in our lives.
I will take on your argument a bit. First, regarding the quota for editors to get compensated, if that was known at the outset before the editor took the job and the editor actually understood what was going on then, I would say there is no opportunism at all. If the company raised the quota after the editors had been hired, that would clearly have been opportunism. Now one also wants to understand how the advertising revenues work. If that has thresholds to it, it makes sense for there to be thresholds to the staff. The question is whether the two are related in a sensible way or not. I couldn't tell that from how you wrote the piece.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the relationship between and editor and his writers, we will see in the next Excel homework that an ongoing relationship has quite different incentives than a one-shot deal. If the the one-time gain from the editor putting his name on the reporter's article is limited, while the long term benefit from having a good relationship with the reporter is substantial, then not being opportunistic survives rationality calculus. If the long term prospects decline, that might be when the editor would behave more opportunistically.
On the timing and location of the rescheduled game, I don't have enough information to make the judgments that you made. For example, what if practice before Irma got close was interrupted because team members needed to secure their households and get family members to safety? (I have family in Florida and they left several days early to drive north.) I believe there was a general sense of chaos at that time. So that very well could have impacted the decision.
What I will say is that at the time of hiring is that I did not know that the count of articles would actually go up at the end of the summer and that the pay would not come. We all assumed that payment was going to be a thing, and the idea of not getting it seemed impossible.
DeleteAs far as the game goes, even considering the idea of moving it up to a Thursday seems like the players were ready and had taken care of things well ahead of time. The chaos certainly could have impacted it, but I think Harvey had shown that preparing early was in fact important, so it's possible that players and their families had started quite early.
I wonder if any of the editors ever made any money. It sounds like the traffic that needed to be generated was an unrealistic number, based off what your manger said. Do you know how that benchmark compared to the typical performance of articles on the site? If it was on par, I'd think it would be fair, but not do a great job of encouraging people to improve given that it seemed like it was so tough to achieve. At the very least there should be some recognition for any traffic generated, or have multiple tiers of traffic goals, with associated rewards. Just my two cents.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the NFL, I wonder if this was ultimately a benefit for them or not. Obviously, in a vacuum, the decision to move the game back to maximize profits makes sense. However, now that everyone is aware of this blatant move to prioritize profits over safely, will it be worth the PR costs? Obviously the NFL has probably considered this, but it's interesting to think about.
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