Armen Alchian Econ 490 fall 2019

Principal-Agent Model It is tough for me to come up with an example of my own involvement in a principle-agent model because I think I have been rarely affected by it. To my memory, I generally act as the agent in the few situations I have experienced triangular principal-agent model. The retail store that I wrote about in previous blog posts will serve as my example for this particular post. To my understanding, in order to address the prompt, I need to describe a situation where there are two principals and one agent. In the case of my example, I am the agent, or the employee, and the two principals are my manager and coordinator. Before I became a stock lead in the back, I worked as a general merchandise associate. In other words, I worked under a stock room coordinator, who worked under the manager, who also had power over me. I respected my coordinator much more, because I was around her more often and she was gentler in her requests. However, ultimately I had to carry out th...

Group Dynamics I have been part of many organizations in the past, many in a work context. One of the jobs I had where I experienced conflict with the dynamics of the group was at a retail store, more specifically a clothing store. My job at the retail store was a stock room lead, or the person responsible for unloading and processing merchandise in the back room. While many employees worked multiple positions, this was the only job I was given and I became quite good at it.  A couple conflicts arose. One had to do with team members not pulling their weight when working with me. Another was from the attitude of one of my managers. Firstly, my job was to open pallets stacked high with boxes that contain merchandise, and put them on a conveyor belt that a coworker then unpacks and sorts. Depending on who gets scheduled to work back there with me, the job can be easy or more difficult. If the person working in the back with me is slow at sorting, then the conveyor belt b...

Discipline and Punishment Personally, I have been disciplined at my current job before, and generally at least once at most other positions I have had. This isn't to say that I'm a bad employee, necessarily, but I have made some mistakes that many others can say they have also made. last year, and the year before that, I worked at the campus recreation center, more specifically the ARC. I was shifted for 6am shifts, and there was a shift that I completely missed due to oversleeping. This is clearly unacceptable, however the management was fairly understanding as I am a college student and I am up late a fair amount of nights. My manager called me in the morning, at least once, to figure out where I was. I missed the class, of course, because I was still sleeping. The best that I could do was to call when I woke up and apologize for missing the shift. I wasn't suspended or anything, and showed up on time for my next shift. I even attempted to pick up other shifts as wel...

Team Production with Gift Exchanges Team production is influenced in many ways, one being with financial incentives. For example, in sales positions, people that sell the deals are given lump-sum cuts to compensate for their work. With that being said, the employees feel a need to sell deals to satisfy their own needs, not simply to help the company succeed. They are often also given extra bonuses for meeting their quarterly quotas. This would still somewhat work, however, if everyone working as a team on one specific deal receives the same compensation. This would insure that working together is necessary, and that everyone would hold each other accountable as one person wouldn't receive a higher cut for doing more work. This is similar to the 'marbles' article, except marbles would only disburse if everyone pulled the rope at the same time, and everyone would get the same amount of marbles in return regardless.  At work, I need to look through a moral lens as opp...

Managing Risk It took me awhile to understand the idea of managing income risk after college. The first couple years of my college career, I cared more about getting by, having a good time, and not spending much time worrying about what my future holds. I was an undeclared major, and didn't make a transfer until junior year. Again, this was because of the lack of time spent thinking about what the best major for my future could be.  I took out many loans to pay for tuition and joined a fraternity, both of which I am still in debt for. I applied for a credit card simply so I can spend money on a new pair of speakers for my room, so as to make for a louder and more fun year. It is obvious that I was careless, and thought in the present as opposed to the future. Now, I still need to pay off my debts, and in order to do so, I need to secure a job where I am well-off enough to do so.  So, I decided to major in Economics. I am currently a senior, and am still not entire...

Throughout the semester thus far, we have written multiple blog posts about organizations and the different parts of them. While I admit I hadn't fully understood each individual topic as I was writing about them, the professor's comments have been very helpful to put me in the right direction. Many of my blog posts deal with my experience in the work force, as I found what I thought provided the most relevant examples. For example, in my first post (not including my alias), I discussed various flaws in occupations I've had in the past. One of these flaws was lack of effort put in by many employees at my campus job. Many people go to different areas of the gym where management can't see them. In this way, the employees may be attempting to act opportunistically, giving them an easier shift while harming the business as they are receiving no extra compensation for doing a good job. Perhaps 'Illinibucks' could be spent on students that do better work, and they can...