last post

Last Post

Looking over this semester I have learned a lot, not only have I learned about the economics of organizations, but I have also learned a lot about group collaboration and group work. From the lectures to the online work we were exposed to a lot of different information. I found the most challenging part of this course but also the most interesting part was when we learned about insurance. I struggled a lot with these excel homeworks, but in the end I was happy that I was able to experience them. I think I found this so interesting because my father works in insurance and I had never really had much exposure to this field besides what we talked about.

When it comes to the layout of the course I liked It a lot, I believe that this is the most well organized course I have been in, all of the deadlines were on the course website along with the lecture lessons if you missed lecture. I found the excel homework to be very beneficial and it was a nice digression from strictly blog posts, because as I do enjoy writing the blog posts, this class would be very dry if it was based more on blog posts. What I mean by this is that if all of the online work was blog posts this class would be a lot less interesting, the blog posts were nice, but the excel homework was a great change up that really diversified the course.

When it comes to my process of doing the blog posts and excel homework, I honestly didn’t have much of one. I would look at the blog post a few days early and start to get ideas floating around for what I was going to write about then come Friday I would write my post. When it comes to the excel homework I just did it when I had time early in the week. Early on the excel homeworks didn’t take much time, but later on there was a few of them that really threw me through a loop and took some time to do. I also enjoyed the group paper. This was my first Econ course at University of Illinois that had a group project in it, and I felt that to be refreshing. I had not been involved in one of those for a while and it was nice to get involved with others and write a paper.

Overall when it comes to improvements to the course I only have one. I am not sure if it has been tried before because honestly I am not sure how it would work, but my thoughts would be if everyone got to comment on everyone else’s blog posts. What I mean by this is that every week a student is assigned 2 random posts to comment on, this would get everyone involved in the class to see everyone else’s viewpoints. I know that other student’s blogs are on the website, and are there for anyone to read, but I feel that most students would not branch out of their group unless they were told to. I understand that the groups need to be there for the group project, but I just had the thought of everyone getting to see the other student’s posts they would get a better consensus of the views of the class. Also I would like if this class changed the group project a little bit to involve something along the lines of the excel homework. What I mean by this is having numbers to work with along with our papers so we can understand the papers more, because they can be a bit confusing at points. Besides that I enjoyed my time in this class greatly.

Reputation

Reputation

I feel that in almost every aspect of my life I have developed a very strong reputation, whether the reputation be good or bad, it was very strong. I believe this comes from my personality. I have been known to have a very big personality, and I always make it my point to be heard. I believe that this comes from me being the youngest of three boys in the family; where the older two excelled greatly in sports, and were much larger than me, I had to find my own way to excel, so I became the vocal one who tried to command every room that I stepped in. this way of life led me to have a very strong reputation in many different ways, in some facets many people enjoyed me and my reputation, and in others they did not.

What I want to bring up with my reputation is my time playing lacrosse. I played lacrosse since 7^th grade and for my whole high school career. Sophomore year I was the starting goalie on our JV team, not necessarily from skill, but because nobody in their right mind wanted to play goalie. I had a reputation of the go getter on the team. Not the hardest worker, but a huge team player. This was because I had the hardest position, and I never complained about it, I was doing this for the team. Every opportunity that I could to spend time with my teammates I did this, and it led to a lot of great friendships that I wrote about in a previous post. I ended up being named captain of our team and this led to mixed reviews. I was named captain because I was the kid on the team who knew everyone the best, and who demanded the most from everybody. I knew how to crack everyone up and get them relaxed the night before a game, knew how to get them pumped up before the game, and knew how to address the team after a loss. I was the captain not because of my athletic skill, but because I was a leader mentally. This led to a short term fallout with some of the players on the team because there really was a lot of kids on the team who were much better players and deserved the captain spot over me. Many of the kids that I was named captain over went on to play division 1 lacrosse, and were also great leaders. Though some players didn’t like me for this, other players, even those older than me felt that I was the best leader on the team because I never let anything come in between our team. I wouldn’t say that there was a time that I “cashed in” my reputation, but during the championship game of our end of the year tournament I ended up yelling at one of the defenders when the opposing team got a game winning goal. I say this because It was a lapse of judgement and was a time where I lost my temper. To be fair everyone had kind of lost their temper and there ended up being a fight at the end of this game with the other team. Though I did yell at a team mate I apologized after and me and him are still very good friends to this day.

After everything was settled nobody was really mad, but some players were upset with me and the coach because they believed that they were a better leader, but I believe that I showed that you don’t need to be the best athlete to be the best leader, but you just need to be a good friend who understands what people need.

Principal-Agent

The principal-agent model arises when an agent, which could be an individual, company, or any other party agrees to work for a principal, which could also be an individual, company or other party, for some form of incentives. This agreement in theory works perfectly, but tends to be interrupted by moral hazards or conflicts of interests where the agent works more in favor for themselves than for the principal. The problem of self-interests can lead agents to manipulate the system to benefit themselves more than the principal could be benefitted. This is where the problem of the principal-agent model occurs. Instead of researching an example of this online I have a real life experience where this issue plays a huge role in every day work.

I, like most others am a broke college student. No matter how much money you think you have in life, it all seems to go right out the door once you come to college. To combat this issue, I got a job on campus. The job I found was at a local bar. I started there as a doorman almost two years ago and at first the pay was very bad. Almost to where the job wasn’t worth it at all. I stuck with it and worked a lot so that I finally became a bartender. I hadn’t realized this problem until I had become a bartender. So the pay is not very good for bartenders, but you do make tips. It just so turns out that about 90% of the money you make at the bar is your tip money, not your actual wage. After bartending a few times fellow co-workers told me that if you want to get more tips you have to charge people less. I had never thought about this, but it makes sense. People do not want to buy expensive drinks at the bar, especially broke college kids like me. So this is where the moral dilemma arises; shorting the bars income will increase mine.

I am not a firm believer in doing this because the loss of sales really doesn’t account for the small increase in tips that I receive so I do not really buy into it, though others do. It is a huge conflict of interest though; you are making the bar lose money for your own personal gain. It reminds me of the casino situation that I read about. Card dealers would help customers win hands because winning customers are more likely to tip. This would then turn into the same type of situation that I face at the bar, but on a much bigger scale. Instead of shaving a dollar or two off of a sale of alcohol, they are helping people win large amounts of money from a casino.

I do believe that the principal-agent model is very important in understanding why people do certain things while they work. I would say that some of these things have a lot bigger of an impact than other things, but overall it comes down to an individual’s morals. I believe that shorting the bar that has employed me for almost two years is wrong so I try to keep my sales as honest as they can be, but I know for many people they just want as much money as they can get their hands on. To solve the problem of this happening I think that the bar could pool tips with management so that people are less incentivized to be out for their own good, but I still do not know how much this could solve. I am sure that if there was a better way to do it, we would be doing it.