Connecting the Dots

In my team structure post I talked about the experience I had while interning at Ashland and looked at the structure of the business and how it affected my experience. In the first post, I responded about how my experience as a Co-Op at Ashland was mostly negative and when reflecting on the structure of the group I have come to the conclusion that it was because of the structure of the group. The structure of the group I worked in had several different facets that seemed to allow the organization to be successful but also caused people in the organization to be stressed and frustrated during change or busy spurts during production. Relating this to the Illinibucks post I could see that the implementation of that program could illicit chaos at the beginning because of the changes that students would not be used to. That can be related to Ashland as chaos occurred during a change in production that was not expected. This unexpected change could cause workers to act unethically at times as they want to meet the standard of their boss but also get ahead. While looking at the opportunism post I now understand why change has transaction costs but also why people might act unethically to get ahead.

The main connection that I felt that is more obvious to me now is that was not before is how organizations have their best interests in hand. This is that in each of the post there is a connection of each organization trying to satisfy their worker’s needs just enough to meet the efficient outcome. Overall, workers are and input and by keeping their workers happy companies reduce turnover. But when a worker is too comfortable in their position they might slack off and cause not work to the optimum standard.

I would say that the process for writing these posts have evolved greatly for me. Starting with my first post I talked about a variety of organizations instead of going into detail with just one organization. In the second post I danced around the point of the post and was unclear of the definition of opportunism though I was able to focus on one experience. In the third post about teams, I was able to relate my experience on my Co-Op for Ashland which I went in-depth in my response to my first post on organizations and really reflect about the team that I worked on using structures from the textbook. I feel like the post was still not as in-depth as I liked it to be and when I wrote the Illnibucks I was really able to go in-depth with the process and what it would be used for. I feel like the process for writing these posts have been taking longer and longer because I really have to think about my past experiences and try to connect them to what we are learning in class. I also tend to write part of the post in one part of the week and then think about that part for a couple of days then write the rest of the post. Overall I think I have been improving but there is still a lot more room for improvement.

What I would like to see in writing these posts in the future is for me to formulate more of a general process that will get me into thinking critically about my experiences and how they relate to the prompts. I would also like to see myself really go into depth with the prompts and be able to fully understand why I am writing about that experience. In other words, I want to make sure that the experiences I choose to relate to the prompt are the best experiences for that prompt. I also want to be able to hit the points in my experiences and dig deeper to find meaning of myself and how to think using economics, relating my experiences to the organization I am in.