Connecting the Dots

Each of the prompts have encouraged the development of their own theme (organizational restructuring, transfer pricing, incentives, teamwork), and after reflecting on these posts, it's helped me become more observant in recognizing organizational issues. That's probably due to the fact that they all asked about some change or conflict. While times of conflict or challenge are more fun to explore and they offer more to learn from, they can also be forgotten if they aren't brought up again. These past weeks in this course have introduced me to the challenge organizations face in aligning preferences while addressing organizational objectives. These prompts made me rethink of events of conflict and challenge. So at a more personal level, these prompts all promoted the theme of self-reflection. Looking at the prompts in this way, they've helped in further developing or revising any previously learned lessons, perhaps due to changes in perspective. 
The click it or ticket story is an event I'll never forget, but where it sits in my mind has changed. From being a lesson on simply following the rules, it turned into an example of how people may behave outside the rules in order to seize an opportunistic moment. Working in tech support seemed like a moment of time within my personal narrative, but taking a step back and observing from a different perspective, I can see that I was part of a much larger system, an entire organization, spanning across multiple groups. I wasn't being moved around, but the organization was being restructured. The restructuring once viewed simply as an inconvenience, is now understood as an attempt to increase efficiency and reduce transaction costs. 

 My process for writing the prompts has evolved over time. When I first started, I'd take the first experience that seemed relevant and run with it. Not considering the suggestion to start early and think about the prompt, I found it difficult to come up with enough material. After the first few attempts and facing writer's block, I decided to take a look at the prompts ahead of time. This helped me come up with a few ideas. When it came down to writing, it I felt somewhat confident that I'd be able to actually create some content, which in itself probably made it easier to write. 

 When it comes to the prompts, I'd be interested in ones that ask to address a specific problem. Something along the lines of a case study. I think pulling from personal experiences helps make the prompt more memorable, but I think it would be more engaging to look at a problem that we might not or would never find ourselves in. This can help in building awareness similar to the way the personal experience prompts work. However instead of re framing an experience, we'll the new situation could introduce the thought process for a different perspective. I also think it's more fun to look into other people's problems. 

 Some of the prompts were really open ended, while others were specific in what they were looking for. For example, in the opportunism prompt I knew what kind of situation I'd come up with, expand on it, and then there was also little description of how some people thought about opportunistic behavior which was something to build off of. Meanwhile with the transfer pricing prompt, I trouble coming up with any ideas that would result in 200 words on the topic. Perhaps it was to encourage more creative approaches to the prompts, but I found it difficult because it was so open ended. I did like seeing how my group addressed the prompt, so I guess it makes reading the prompts for enjoyable.   

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 14, 2017 at 12:31 PM

    You wrote about conflict an challenge. In the ideal, of course, there is potential for those things, but the effective organization finds ways to overcome them and the actual workings go smoothly, with a strong sense of teamwork in going about organization business. When that does happen, however, there is a tendency to ignore what goes into making it happen. So the cases of conflict are useful to consider because they highlight the potential for conflict even when it doesn't happen.

    As to your suggestion about the prompts, you might be interested to know that a few years ago I had students do papers that were on case studies (based on business-school articles rather than on economics papers as we are doing now). You would clearly find the case approach in business courses on organization. I found going that route that we were losing the economic points I had wanted to emphasize.

    However, there might be a way for you to do this on your own, based on reading the Wall Street Journal or the Business Section of the New York Times, or perhaps the business pages in the Chicago Tribune. It is not that hard to find articles that are relevant to class themes. You are welcome to do that and write your post about that, just as long as you establish the connection to the class. It will take some additional work by you ahead of time to do this. But reading the business news on a regular basis might be a good habit for you to develop, in any event. This would be a way to encourage that.

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    Replies
    1. William BaumolOctober 17, 2017 at 7:40 PM

      Putting the usefulness of studying conflicts in that way, it makes me think that studying instances of success are just as important. There's the "don't do this or else that will happen" for the failures and conflicts, and then the cases of success promote the opposite way of thinking.

      I'll stay on guard for any interesting stories and keep in mind the option if using the case study approach for a post.

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