Last class!

So for our last class the presentations for okay. I especially liked the presentation that tried to use and integrate acting into their work. I thought it captured my attention more than all the rest of the presentations. I think I would like to see more acting and use of theater in the presentations however I don't think that some or most people think that its appropriate. I think they feel that sticking to more traditional methods such as the power point is more acceptable than anything else. This can make presentations boring and cliche, and it may not always keep the viewers attention. I've also noticed that some groups bride attention and possibly grades by giving out candy and cookies. I really don't think approach works to well either. I will just be eating something while NOT paying attention to you presentations. I'm not saying that you are doing a bad job or that you didn't put work into your stuff. But it is the last class hence my lack of attention towards everything. So with that I'd like to say that I was satisfied with this class and the information I learned while taking it.

Thanks

Chris

First impressions!

The presentations that I viewed on Monday were interesting and I think the one that peaked my interest the most was the Pixar presentation. The presenters had good form although their presentation was a little long I believed they did a good job in keeping the information relevant to the issue at hand. The BP presentation I thought was way to long it had upwards of 30 slides! I think that if you properly research and prepare your slide show should not nearly be as long. But they did come together in the end despite that fact. I'd like to talk a little more about Pixar and the company itself because it is something that interests me. Pixar is an animation company that depends on computers and cg equipment to complete its projects and movies. The process is an interesting one and it goes something like this. The artists start by drawing up concepts from a creative guide, often put together by the art director. This guide is the starting point for all creative tropes and ideas for the film/animation. The art then makes its way to the 3D modelers who model the two dimensional images in 3D space. The modelers then hand of the model to riggers who rig the model with animation features, such as joints, bones etc. They then texture the model and send it off to the rendering farm to render the full image of the model. This is a fascinating process and one that I was thinking of during the Pixar presentation.

Power, and the people that wield it!

So we have been speaking a lot about power lately. I'd like to take this moment to highlight some situations and people that may have power. I am trying to re-imagine power in the hands of the common folk. Taking action is one piece of power we all hold. This is my most crucial point I'd like to make. To not take action in a situation of opportunity is a waste to say the least, and at the most it is a waste of your own personal power to change and to act on your surrounds. I think people in general seem to minimize the power they have as a collective and seem to concentrate power in their mind on the upper class. Now that we have the internet one could even argue that the lower classes have more power since they have opportunities to come together and share ideas and power. This is unconventional wisdom of course and their is no evidence to back this sort of conclusion up. It is also my personal opinion and I realize it may not hold much water but I really do believe that sort of being chained and locked up I think we all hold some amount of power in society.

Business Exercise; Incompetence?

So corporate exercise was interesting and I thought it was overall a good experience to have gone through even if I thought it might have been mismanaged at some points. I'd like to offer a critique of this exercise and show some of my opinion in how I thought this may have been effective or not. The first aspect of this exercise I'd like to highlight was the SHEAR incompetence of the leaders at the top. This is of course from my prospective as an employee of course. The incompetence stems from the lack of communication and proactive action taken to make the so called corporation function correctly. I know I felt like the employees were tossed aside in favor of the managers and customer interaction with the top.This type of neglect is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE. Effective leadership would have included a more proactive stance to bring all the parties together to work out a deal that would have benefited everyone, and at the very least everyone in the fictitious organization should have at least been informed. Another words, if your given a game such as this and told you can make up and change rules their frankly should be no excuse to have your plan executed perfectly. This is just my opinion and I have been influenced and biased this week by observing a string of very INCOMPETENT people, so I am also ranting as well.

Free Radicals

Since we didn't get to have class this week I thought I would blog about the radical article that I read as part of the readings. It is an interesting article I must say, radicals come in all forms and have a large set of ideologies to go with them. Personally I don't think I like radicalism, and the reasons for that is because it drives away compromise and it doesn't leave room for realistic views to be taken into account. A good example of the I believe was broadcast on c-span not to long ago over the summer. The two houses of congress tried to get together and sign a bill that would help decrease the debt, slash government spending and raise the taxes by eliminating loop holes and making the rich pay more. Due to the radicalism of BOTH sides, the bill failed to pass and we were left in the dark with a slight credit downgrade. So that is perhaps one example in why I think radicalism is bad. Now I will discuss an argument for radicalism. Radicalism serves a interesting role in today's society, it can be good and facilitate conversations of different issues. This is one function that I agree serves a purpose in the greater nation. Again radicals I believe are not needed on the whole but in a minority grouping in any society they can serve a productive purpose.

Goates Dollars!

So our in class exercise was an interesting look into how a company functions and how important negotiation can be. I for one enjoyed the exercise despite the lack of organization and structure. I was a low level employee and I had to come up with slogans touting the importance of managers and how they "rule the world". I myself came up with three slogans that I thought no one else would think of and I believed I succeeded. My manager I thought lead the team quite well. She really took charge and told us what was going on even though she took a little while in the beginning. The only area I thought she could improve upon was the negotiation aspect of the exercise. I felt that she was not aggressive enough when negotiating out a deal. If she had been more aggressive I believe that we would have walked away with more money. In another aspect of contributing to the lack of money collected, I believe was our timing of the presentation. Some other groups beat us to the punch and captured the time of the executives more than us and some other groups. I believe we may have had the superior product but since other teams had more capable negotiators and were able to beat us to the "board room" that we got shorted on the amount of money we could have made.

Ethics of Managers

In this class discussion we took a look at ethics and the different ways for going about using ethics in a managerial position. Machiavellian ethics is concerned with self-interest, Lincolnian ethics is concerned with serving the boss, and Plutonian ethics is concerned with serving everyone's interest. I don't particularly like these choices. If I were to say that I am disposed to a specific area of these ethical codes, I would say that Machiavellian ethics strikes my fancy the most. I act in my own self interest most of the time, and in fact I am attending college for my own self interest as well. Most if not all of my actions have a facet to them of Machiavellian ethics. Although individually I am self interested and aligned, I do believe that a corporation with a lot of power influence and money, should have some sense of responsibility about it. It is impossible for a large corporations to have absolute responsibility over its stakeholders. It is at best responsible for half of the stakeholders, but lets not make this completely arbitrary. We should at least say that the company should be responsible for at most half of the stakeholders it would effect directly through policy and major business decisions. I am in no means a philanthropist however I do believe that companies should take a more proactive approach to responsibility and in the process accept a mixed approach in ethics when it comes to managing companies. I myself have learned to accept mixed ethics in my life. While pursuing my own self interests I have learn to put others before myself and have come to enjoy it, and benefit from it.

Magical Motivations!

So while examining the magic cable case in class. It dawned on me that a lot of different methods could be used to evaluate one situation in terms of motivation. This is an average garden variety issue for people job hopping and being able to identify and analyze their motivations is key to understanding what drives them. I really liked this exercise because it showed me motivations that I would not have otherwise seen. In knowing these theories and the situations they can be applied to it can helpful within my own life as well. Taking the hertzbergs theory of motivation for a minute. Lets apply this to my college life and see what we get. Motivators for this theory inclde challenging work. Seeing as how I am double major I a definitely challenging myself to do the very best I can under such conditions. I have been participating in many clubs here at ship and that investment gives me a sense of responsibility, especially when I am elected to leadership positions within that organization. Some hygiene factors would be my status as a student, it is something that is basic when you are attending college. Another hygiene factor would be the level of work I am assigned. If I am assigned a low level of work I may become demotivated to do anything else or to do the assignments well. Using these theories within our own lives as evaluative tools can be crucial to seeing our motivations through objective eyes. I think this is something that I will use going forward for myself and others along the way.

Hedonism, In Theory

I'd like to take a moment and talk about the motivational theories that were discussed in class on Monday. Motivational theory I find to be interesting and applicable to the real world and thus it holds my interest. The first aspect of motivational theory we talked about really wasn't anything to complicated. That is the hedonism theory of motivation, which says that humans beings will always seek out what is pleasurable to them. In motivation this may be such a thing as a reward system that leads you to perform a certain task. The reward is the motivator and it drives the individual to feel he needs to complete the task at hand to achieve a state of well being. It seems that this first theory could be applied to almost anything in our lives. If we are forced to perform a task or job that we find unpleasant, or if the reward is not great enough we will reject it. I believe to a certain extent that hedonism is involved in all our decision making. It may take a back seat to some of the other aspects of motivation or decision making, but I believe that it is still their guiding our hand in our motivational behavior. I chose to talk about and explore hedonism because it was the theory least discussed in class. Understanding it better and how it functions in our lives may lead us to understand and make better decisions with or without it. I believe this is a important part of understanding what motivates us and how we can continue to have that motivation throughout our lives.

Good Job, Now Stop!

Our lecture on motivation I found interesting and that is why I am going to explore a certain article a little more in depth. 5 reasons to stop saying good job really gives me a good insight into motivation. We start off by examining none other than the parent child relationship. We see that praising a child for some tasks can be good, however praising a child all the time would can have the negative effect of manipulation. A praise may feel empty and not earned which will leave the child feeling a sense of frustration and confusion. The second reason discussed would be misleading a child's perception about how  they feel about a certain accomplishment. Parents may praise their children for legitimate reasons, but this may be minimizing how the child really feels about the achievement. Inadvertently we may be imprinting our own feelings on the children which may look more for outside feedback rather than relying on themselves. Building on this idea we are also telling a child how to feel. This can create more confusion in the child's mind that they may feel like they want to feel disappointed but then they are praised. This may even cause frustration, and it goes back to the parents abuse of praise for our convenience. Praise may also be to much of a factor in motivating children to perform a certain activity. Children are performing tasks for praise instead of their own sake or even to explore it. So it is harmful because the children miss the entire point of performing a specific activity. This may have consequences later on as a child raised this way may be more reward focused than driven by exploration and knowledge. This leads into the final point made by the article which was the falling of achievement by the child. Continued praise on everything from the parents may give the child a feeling of superiority and thus may leave the child feeling like he is good at everything when in fact he is not. The fact is that continued praising by the parents of children everywhere is something that should be toned down. This is the wrong way to motivate children and should not be continually used. I'm not saying never praise your children just be aware that to much praise can possibly have a harmful effect on them, and all parents never want to harm their children, so keep a mindful eye.

Book Report-Entry 5_Freakonomics

Parenting is a complicated issue that we all will eventually grapple with. In this portion of the book we will take a look at some aspects of parenting that may or may not be effective in influencing success in a child’s life. The first thing that the chapter looks at is risk. As parents we tend to assess risk for our children’s activities. Even the most mundane and everyday task is assessed in terms of risk and potential for harm. The example the book illustrates is a risk assessment of letting your child with a friend in a house with a gun versus playing at a house with a swimming pool. Parents tend to evaluate situations based not on statistics but on a magnitude of how horrifying a situation can become. Having a child, especially your child getting shot versus drowning will make you think of the most vivid outcome. In this case it is or would be the bullet wound from the gun. This is a fallacy that is explained away by statistics, and we see that childhood drowning’s a much more likely occurrence than getting shot with a gun. Parents tend to evaluate situations risk based on the worst possible outcome. We then take a look at another important aspect of parenting, and that is raising your child. Parents always want to raise the best possible child they can but the book raises the question of how much influence a parent actually has in the process of determining how successful their child will be. Various factors are explored such as socioeconomic status of parents, education of parents, and age of the mother when she had children and involvement in the PTA among other factors. Correlations can be strong with some of these factors but causality with child success is a little harder to find when evaluating these factors. It is found that only a few factors matter when raising a child to be successful and they are as follows: Child has educated parents, child’s parents have a high socioeconomic status, child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of the child’s birth, the child’s birth weight, the parents ability to speak English, whether or not the child is adopted, the parents involvement in the PTA, and finally whether the child has many books in the home. These factors were the traits that could be controlled for in determining a child’s success or not. Some are more symptoms than cause of a particular child’s success however they point in a direction that may hint at whether your child will succeed or not.

The last chapter in the book wraps up the parenting discussion by showcasing another aspect of parenting which is naming your child. We start off by looking at the naming gap between black and white families. African American children tend to have unique names compared to white children who have more mainstream names. Naming a child in this instance may be an indicator of parent education, class or any number of other factors that may contribute to a child’s success rate in life. We also tend to see varying names between blacks and whites as a culture gap. A more segregated neighborhood may be more inclined to name their children based on immediate cultural and social values. If those values are not mainstream or in this case “white” then of course they will be different. Ill-educated parents may also believe that naming their offspring something that may predict their success or describe it also contributes. This is seen not only in black communities in lower class neighborhoods but in lower class white neighborhoods as well. A wider naming convention is also at work according to the data gathered in the book. “Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. (Freakonomics pg201)” This naming framework has been at play more years and it may even be able to predict future names of children. However, “an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be.(Freakonomics pg204)” This means that the naming of the child is something that doesn’t really matter in terms of the child’s success. A parent can only leave their mark and hint at how the child should be successful but they children over all will have to create their own successes.

Work Cited

Levitt D. Steven, Dubner J. Stephen. “Freakonomics”. 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2005, Print.

Book Report-Entry 4_Freakonomics

The fourth chapter within the book “Freakonomics” continues a little bit of what the book was talking about earlier. It starts off by giving us a little bit of background history about Romania during communist rule. The leader of the country at the time was Nicolae Ceausescu. He was a tyrannical leader that ruled his country through fear. One of the more interesting things he instated when he came to power was the banning of abortion, and all sex education and contraceptives. This would have far reaching consequences for him later on because it would cause the population to surge. When the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989 the increased population came out to protest against him. Him and his family were eventually caught given a swift trial, and executed by firing squad. This will end up tying into the chapter later.

The chapter then takes a swift turn towards the American crime rate, and how it rose from the 1960’s up until the early 1990’s when it fell sharply. The book explains that several factors may be at work behind the lowering crime rate. These factors include: better economy, innovative police strategies, reliance on prisons, changes in drug markets, aging population, tougher gun laws, increased police forces, and other strategies such as death penalty and gun buybacks etc. So these factors were discussed by the book. It is explained that every single one of these factors had contributed in small ways to the drop in crime. These factors were explained to have correlation and effect on the decreasing crime rate. Although minimal at best and sometimes almost negligible the factors that have been proven to take the crime rate down.

While the aforementioned factors are somewhat relevant, the true culprit for what brought down the crime rate would surprise us. The legalization of abortion in the United States had a lot to do with the dropping crime rate in the early 1990’s. The book points to the Romanian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu to find explanation of this phenomenon. According to the Romanian data, children that were born after the abortion ban were more likely to become criminals. This was due to the fact that the children were not raised with care and love. A mother who does not fully love her child may neglect it physically and emotionally. This leaves the child more susceptible to becoming a criminal in society later on. The same could be applied to the legalization of abortion in the United States.

Since abortion has been legalized, the females who have felt that their children would not receive the love and attention from them have gotten abortions. “Two factors in particular, childhood poverty and a single parent household are among the strongest predictors a child will have a criminal future.(Freakonomics,pg138).” After examining the major contributor of the crime rate drop of the early 1990’s we visit the possibly uncomfortable act of trying to place on a fetus. The book starts off by using the value system put in place for body parts in dangerous jobs. It outlines which body parts are most likely more useful and hence more valued. In the case of the fetus the book uses an objective third party view point in which the individual agrees with neither side. “This individual does not believe that a fetus is the 1:1 equivalent of a newborn, yet neither does he believe that a fetus has no relative value. (Freakonomics,pg144).” He assigns a value of 100 fetuses to 1 newborn child, this value is arbitrary within the context of the book but it illustrates the point that using abortion to control the crime rate in inefficient, because it creates more “murders” than it can stop. This value is completely arbitrary as I said before and may not reflect the majority of viewpoints on what value a fetus versus a newborn child has. One thing has been proven though by legalizing abortion, which is the confidence of the mother to assess what life their child would have based on the resources of the mother at hand.

Work Cited

Levitt D. Steven, Dubner J. Stephen. “Freakonomics”. 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2005, Print.

Nacirema, the tribe of teeth!

The Nacirema article was a very interesting read, and I would very much like to take the time to explore it. I believe the article is interesting because it takes the time to explore things from a third person perspective, or more accurately an anthropological perspective. The article specifically talks about everyday "rituals" which we go through to prepare for the day. Now I'd like to take a moment and put these rituals in perspective. To someone who is not familiar with these, it may seem like a strange process to go through each morning. The way we treat our body or objects may seem mundane but repetitive action or process show that we actually care about ourselves and the way we look quite a lot. We have become desensitized in a way from what we do everyday. Being able to deduce what values a culture holds just from studying what they do everyday is valuable  It may even tell us more about ourselves and society than we ever could. By providing a third party window from which to view ourselves we have an unobstructed view of our activity and how we go about life. Dissecting a culture like this as I said before gives valuable insight into what the people if such a culture value and how the behave. Interaction with each other is another interesting insight that is gleamed by viewing a culture from this perspective. It can tell us what in socially acceptable and at the same time tells us what is rewarding and punishable. Anthropological views are important and I would like to see more examinations of this sort on different cultural and geographic locations to examine them further.

Cultural, Layer Cake

The cultural layering that was talked about today in class I found to be exceptionally interesting. So I am here to discuss this topic further. Cultural layering seems as though it can give valuable insight into the way a cultural interacts and thinks within the context of itself. More specifically if we look at certain symbols within a culture it may have references that may be seen differently. The main example of this used in class was a bumper sticker flag on the back of an automobile. Lets take a look at a different context and this time lets use color. In Asian culture the color white is known to signify death. However in more western cultures more often than not white is a color of purity and is often used in many wedding ceremonies. This cultural meaning isn't complete esoteric and maybe understood by some people. So let us take a look at yet another cultural symbol, the swastika. Now immediately I know that the third Reich comes to mind and Germany in the midst of WW2, Hitler and his persecution of the Jews, etc. But what if you saw this symbol in a far away isolated Asian village high in the mountains of the Himalayas. Oh they must be Nazi's right? wrong. They are in fact using the swastika in the proper use. Yes it can be used properly, because it was used before as a symbol of peace and balance within, Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. One may not have known what the symbol meant without the benefits of cultural immersion before hand. This is why it is important to take note of differences however slight within different cultures. In a more pragmatic context such as a business transactions internationally it  helps to know the social norms and intricacies of the cultural your dealing with. Shooting down your own multi-million dollar business deal with a simple hand gesture that YOU consider non-offensive, may get you fired, or at the very least reprimanded. Even managing a global team of employees has practical applications when exploring the layers of a culture. It really is important and has far reaching consequences whether they be good or bad is up to you.

Book Report-Entry 3_Freakonomics

Third part of the book which is chapter 3 was all about conventional wisdom. The chapter starts out defining what conventional wisdom really is. It gives us the example of Mitch Snyder. Snyder was an advocate of the homeless and wanted to do everything within his power to bring attention to the issue and eradicate homelessness. The fact is that he had too much power and ended up fabricating some facts to help his cause. This ended up becoming conventional wisdom because the media and everyone else took it as fact. The numbers such as 3 million American homeless, and 45 homeless individuals die every second, are rather extreme. By not questioning this, it eventually ends up becoming conventional wisdom through channels such as the media. Why should we question it? These numbers come from an expert on the subject after all. The book however stresses that it should be questioned. It also examines how conventional wisdom is fabricated; this leads us into the next topic explained by the book, crack gangs.

The book examines the conventional wisdom a dealing crack in Chicago with a gang called the “Black Disciple Nation”. Preconceived notions would have been held that the drugs dealers were rich and that crack dealing was one of the most profitable jobs in America at the time. However, questioning the conventional wisdom the book decides to look deeper. A University of Chicago graduate student by the name of Sudhir Venkatesh was performing a survey in a poor black neighborhood when he came across some gang members of the “Black Disciple Nation” shooting dice. He tried to ask about his survey but was rejected. This moment in the book is where Venkatesh first encounters the gang and learns about their illustrious leader JT. JT was in fact a college graduate, and held a degree in business, and consequently running the gang as it were a business.

Venkatesh ended up spending a night in the hands of the gang and was released the next day. He ran home and was glad to be alive, although he felt a curiosity that had to be satisfied so he kept coming back to the gang. He worked out a deal with the gang or in this case JT, that he could publish some of what he found. Due to Venkatesh’s research on the gang we now know what the structure looked like, and how the gang was financed. We also understand how the crack trade worked economically. The “Black Disciple Nation” had a top management branch called the board of directors. These top managers ran the strategic gang chapters around the nation. They taxed the lower managers for a right to sell crack in certain areas if the country. They would take 20% of the revenue from the crack deals. The rest of the revenue they let the lower manager’s sort out. In the case of JT he paid himself well and his foot soldiers got little next to nothing maybe $3 an hour at most. Several reasons are given for why there is such a low wage paid to the foot soldiers. The first economical reason would be that workers willing to work the job are plentiful and that the work is scarce. This drives a very competitive field for crack dealing and explains away the question that the book asks, which is “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?” The gang recognizes that JT is getting paid big, and that he needs to because he is the leader, this is the second rationale behind the pay discrepancy.

A lot of poor black men see crack dealing as an opportunity that is within their reach. So they take a chance that they could make it to the top and make a lot of money. This is a dangerous proposition and often ends in prison or death. The book highlights that 1 in 4 gang members will die when dealing crack. That is an extremely high number when compared to other legitimate industries. The risk it worth it in this case and can be explained away by the lure of big profits. The “Black Disciple Nation” ended up getting a federal indictment placed against it and the gang was shut down by the authorities. JT was arrested and the gang was wiped out in the end. The conventional wisdom was questioned here and the facts were attained. It showed us that not everything should be taken at face value, and that conventional wisdom should always be questioned in order to get to the truth of things.

Work Cited

Levitt D. Steven, Dubner J. Stephen. “Freakonomics”. 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2005, Print.

Researching, Toyota Recall

So today in class we researched for the semester organizational behavior project. I am here to discuss what I have found and to present some of the ideas that we are trying to research. We didn't start out with Toyota's recall, we first thought we had wanted to research the occurrence of Steve Jobs stepping down from being CEO of Apple. My team felt that they simply did not have enough data for this project and so we moved on to the Toyota recalling of fault accelerator petals. This incident dealt with the accelerator petals in Toyota cars that would suddenly seem to accelerate to high speeds with out the drive initiating/applying pressure to the petal itself. This was a major problem for Toyota when it happened, and it required a special kind of response. I am focusing specifically on product safety and crisis management in my organizational research. I believe to get to the heart of the problem it is imperative to see how an individual operates under a crisis management mode. Reactions are different and stress is high when experiencing very high pressure situations. The thought process is different and requires careful decision making as to not further exacerbate the problem. The second research topic I am looking into is safety and culture. These two aspects really are important to explore from the fact that Toyota is an international company which has different cultural values of safety. It is important to understand both of these in a social context before we can move on and apply them to Toyota's accelerator problem. These two topics will be crucial in dissecting the organizational problem behind Toyota's former crisis and may even shed light on a better course of action or prevention plan that may help in future crisis.

Biased Mind

So we discussed in class on Monday that we all have certain psychological biases when evaluating a given situation. The bias depends on what the question was asking and we've discovered the initial bias that lie within heuristics. The top three heuristics discussed are as follows: availability heuristic, representative heuristic, and the anchoring/adjustment heuristic. All three of the heuristics operate in the background when we are making decisions about a certain situation. Lets take a look at the availability heuristic first. An example would be that an person may think that more deaths result from shark attacks than lightning strikes. It is false, more deaths occur annually from lightning. This type of bias is exasperated by the media, internet and other public sources that typically report more sensational stories or skew facts. Relating this to my book I'm reading now, I can say that it explains to that questioning conventional wisdom is something that should always be taken into account for. When one questions even the experts we tend to get to the truth of a particular matter no matter what  subject it may be. Freakonomics does not directly relate what their saying about conventional wisdom directly to the availability bias, but I believe that it is implying at the relationship between the two subjects. In the end the availability heuristic is influenced from outside sources such as media, and this may be something that is only cured through education and questioning of the so called facts.

Book Report-Entry 2_Freakonomics

The second chapter in the book “Freakonomics focuses on fear tactics, and information hoarding. We will get to the details a little later first I’d like to go through the chapter and summarize what I’ve read. The chapter starts out giving information about the Ku Klux Klan. It explains why the organization was formed and what its purpose was. It then goes into detail and explains that the KKK then develops into a larger terrorist organization. During the turn of the early 20^th century the KKK was a mysterious organization that nobody could seem to learn about. It kept its information shrouded in passwords and secrecy. The KKK operated under secrecy until a man named Stetson Kennedy came along. He came from the same lineage that probably would have otherwise would have influenced him to join the KKK. He thought the KKK to be small minded and heavily bigoted, he sought to fight against them by infiltrating their organization and exposing their secrets. He posed as a clansman and gained access to their most intimate secrets and learned of their inner workings. One important thing that he found in the KKK that is the running theme in this chapter was that the KK used fear and information hoarding advance their goals. The graph of the lynching of Africa American citizens within the United States illustrates this principle well. The decreasing lynching’s and increased membership of the clan shows that the majority of clan’s terrorist activities are based around fear and not action. This type of behavior was also found within several other groups in this chapter which I will discuss later. The KKK ended up becoming exposed through a radio broadcast series that used their secrets within the program itself. This led to an organizational collapse in the KKK because the clansmen were losing faith in the organization and lost control of the information they had. This decreased membership by a large margin and held of the KKK from being revived.

The second half of the book explores different groups that use the information hoarding and fear to their advantage. The first group was very brief and that was the business of term life insurance. This example presents more of what occurs when information cannot be contained and the advantage are lost by experts. The term life insurance price went down dramatically due to the internet. Internet provided people or in this case customers with the ability to search out the lowest price on term life insurance. This forced competitors to drop prices to low levels and made it such that they could no longer make huge profits off of their expertise and fear. We explore this theory more with the industry of real estate agents and how they manage their client’s houses. Real estate agents end up selling their clients house for much lower in some cases because the extra revenue generated by the sale is not worth working for in the agents mind. In most cases it ends up being a sum of a few hundred extra dollars. On the other hand when agents got to sell their own home they often keep it on the market ten extra days and use different language to advertise the home than they would advertise a client’s home. Some terms are a tip off to buyers, because it is considered to be a language of the real estate agent. Terms such a “spacious” and “well maintained” do not hold the same value of those as “corian” or “granite” which are fancier and more luxurious terms to use. However even with this information advantage real estate agents are still dealing with a closing information gap due to none other than the internet. The internet is a vast place with a lot of information available. It also can fall victim to the theory of information hoarding and fear itself. The end of the chapter explores this phenomenon in a social light. It looks at the online dating services provided by websites. It shows that the majority of people lie about their statistics. This is quite common among online users of dating services for a number of reasons. Some want to make their attributes more attractive or what have you. This relates to information hoarding because it shows us how we gain an advantage in a social context using information that others do not have. In essence perfect information may be impossible from attaining, and there is always going to be an advantage gap even if it is minute and small.

Integrating, all day long!

I'd like to take a minute and talk about what we went over in class today. Yeah yeah I know its not the readings but I'd like to highlight something in particular and this was stated in my last blog post on negotiation. I feel it is important that I say this and say it clearly. Integrative negotiation is important. I was touting last week about the other types of negotiation, well here it is. Looking at it closer we can see that this type of negotiation is dependent on creating value, rather than a "who can grab it first" sort of mentality. This is a more flexible way of negotiating and allows for a win win situation while negotiating. This can be helpful when trying to maintain long term relationships such as a buyer and a vendor relationship, or an employee manager relations, and even business to customer relations. This type of negotiation can occur with almost anything, and in a business situation it is sometimes important to compromise. In this type of negotiation it is important to find out what the interests of each party is. Once the interests are established then the negotiation can be initiated. Interests should most likely NOT be aligned in this case, because then it creates room for value to be created by the negotiating parties involved. In all it is a very important type of negotiation and one that can rely on keeping long term relationships together and functioning at a professional and personal level.

Negotiation

The negotiation exercise that was conducted in class was an interesting look into real world negotiation tactics and application. I'd like to discuss the possibilities of negotiation tactics a little further by diving into the article called "Secrets of Power Negotiating" written by Roger Dawson. Most of the time two people are  negotiating for themselves. They both want something from the negotiating and what technique they use and how effective they use it depends on whether they achieve their goal. The first technique that is explained within the article is "Asking for more than you want". This type of strategy was apparent in some of the negotiating within the class exercise. We saw some initial offerings that were higher in terms of the sellers and some initial offerings that were pretty low on the buyers part. These initial offerings set the precedence for negotiation. They establish a range of integers that can be discussed and mused on, and depending on the number it may help your negotiation position. In the one case recorded in class one individual offered at a high price of $70. They were the seller and they completely blindside the buyer, this is a pure example of how your initial asking price can work within your favor when negotiating a price. The second piece of advice offered up by the article is to NEVER say  yes to the first offer. This is pretty understandable, because you want to feel around in order to know how low they are willing to go. Yet again there were at least two examples in class of this happening. The sellers offered up a low price of $18 or $20 and the buyers took it right away. In this case I believe both parties to be at fault, but I think the sellers may have been more at fault in this particular situation and I will explain why. The buyers knew what their price range was and what they wanted to achieve so when a low number such as $18 or $20 was thrown out  there they took it without a second thought. The sellers should have argued for a higher price instead of agreeing with the buyers. They made a mistake, in this case they screwed themselves out of the possibility of obtaining a better price on their product they are selling. In the context their boss may have taken disciplinary action or even fired them. This is just a brief look into applying some of the negotiating tactics from the article and using it to analyze our in class exercise.

Game Theory...

So the excersise today in class was to maximize profits for our respective businesses. When we started I immediately thought of the concept of game theory. I thought of this because of the four choice scenarios that were given before me. It jogged my memory of game theory and how it worked. Reminding myself of what it was. So lets go over the actual definition of game theory. According to Merriam Webster it is the analysis of a situation involving conflicting interests (as in business or military strategy) in terms of gains and losses among opposing players. So the game theory is mainly concerned with gains or loses, and if we apply it to the in class exercise we find that we only have gains or loses in terms of profit earned. The game theory model was extremely helpful within this exercise. It can also be applied to other situations that may have a loss or gain option within them. Another situation it could be applied to would be collusion. Price collusion in the United States is illegal, and thus game theory starts to take its roles within setting prices. If the price game is played multiple times then the businesses who are playing are going to eventually settle on a mutually beneficial price scheme. It will make them the most profit and thus they will both cooperate with each other to fix the price. The example for this was highlighted in class as gas stations. They signal each other in order to place their pricing very close to each other and this gives them a competitive edge against the consumer. Game theory has many applications and only a few have been discussed here. It is a very convenient tool for making decisions and should be used to decide certain outcomes of situations

Book Report Entry 1_Freakonomics

A good introduction to the book “Freakonomics” would be that it explores the hidden side of everything through the eyes of two economists. This book essentially takes the rules of economics and applies it to some interesting problems in society.

The first chapter “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?” tells us about the prevalent problem of cheating. It leads off exploring a study done in Israel about daycare and how many adults pick up their children late. The study starts off being normal and then some incentives are brought into the picture over a period of weeks. These incentives are to compel the parents of the children to not be late when they pick up their children. The first incentive put in place was a three dollar fine. This did not do much to curve the tardiness of parents. They found that if perhaps the fine had been ramped up to a relevant number such as one hundred dollars, it may make a difference in the amount of late pick-ups. This was the beginning example to illustrate how economic incentives can be place on people to achieve a certain objective or outcome. In this case it was the parent’s behavior that was the target of influence.

In the middle part of the chapter, the book goes into more descriptive details about the specific behavior of cheating. Similar to the daycare study in which some parents “cheated” their way out of picking up their children on time, some teachers have done something similar whit their students. More specifically a certain group of teachers within the Chicago area school district have been caught cheating to help their students do better on standardized testing. The government mandate that requires this was the “No Child Left behind act” enacted during the Bush administration. They boil the cheating down to two types, which is either the teacher changing their student’s answers or the teacher who gears their material towards direct test topics and/or questions. They create a computer algorithm to evaluate spikes in test scores and use it to identify the cheating teachers. Later on this information was applied to find those teachers who cheated and to expunge them from the school system.

In the last third of the chapter they link the cheating that the teachers were doing to sumo wrestlers. Now it may not appear that sumo wrestlers cheat, but in fact there is a lot of back room dealing that goes on according to the data within the book. “As it turns out, the data show that the 7-7 wrestlers win only 40 percent of the rematches. Eighty percent in one match and 40 percent in the next? The most logical explanation is that the wrestlers made a quid pro quo agreement.(Freakonomics pg43)” This type of data shows that the wrestlers indeed have been cheating and are continuing to do so. In the very last bit of the chapter, we have a contrasted view of the cheating that goes on in society. Paul Feldman an economists and former weapons budget analyst for the USA Navy gives us a good look at his bagel business. He had based his bagel business off of a goodwill system. The way it worked was that he would leave boxes for people to leave money in and then would deliver the bagels based on how much money was collected. He recorded his numbers meticulously and found that only a small percentage of companies would not pay him the minimum amount which was approximately 90 percent. This shows that not everyone in the world may cheat as we often do. It paints a picture of who is cheating and what characteristics they may have. His study was a turnaround from the previous two in depth reviews of the cheating that can occur within a system. This chapter relates heavily to the organizational behavior of people and how they may or may not cheat.

This whole chapter relates to organizational behavior on so many levels. We can start by exploring the economic incentive used to influence people. We are all influenced by incentives, every single day. We go to work so we can receive payment. We use that payment to survive and for personal enjoyment. We are incentivized not to break the law lest we end up in prison. Simple incentives that have been place within society. This leads me into the cheating that was explored in the chapter. I don’t believe this was discussed too much but the undertones are here. The incentives that may be put into place may also be used indirectly to entice people to cheat. So it is important that people have enough integrity about them to resist the urge to cheat and take the easy way out. Another part of what I found makes people more susceptible to cheating would be training. The amount of training that one receives may make the difference between a cheater and a normal person. So maybe integrating the amount of training and/or education about ethics into a specific work environment may help stave off cheating. In all cheating is a part of human nature, and it is always on the table when considering an objective or goal. It is just whether or not someone may seriously consider cheating as an option when they go to perform a task. We hope that most of the time the education and training when considering an organizational decision or behavior can help to mitigate cheating. This will make the organizational process more of an ethical environment in which the correct decisions and behaviors can be made and performed.

Work Cited

Levitt D. Steven, Dubner J. Stephen. “Freakonomics”. 10 East 53^rd Street, New York, NY 10022: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2005, Print.

NASA's Dysfunctional Teams

So this article is about NASA's teams and how they are dysfunctional. More specifically though it focus on a specific team called the MMT (Mission Management Team). This was the team responsible for making decisions about missions that the space shuttle would take. This article highlights a specific mission. The last mission that the space shuttle Challenger would ever take. The article explains that the MMT came together and had group meetings about the severity and the possible solutions to the problem. The problem being that a piece of foam had managed to penetrate the thermal protection of one of the space shuttle wings. The way the MMT responded was inadequate at best. They acted in a dysfunctional way that probably could have otherwise prevented this disaster from happening. The team didn't take into account the whole picture, and they most certainly did not leave an open mind. They ended up coming to the conclusion that the foam could not seriously damage the shuttle and this prevented any further discussion that could have otherwise prevented this. This type of team behavior is a reckless and harmful. As stated in the article confirmation bias also played a role in this incident as well. Assumptions and preconceived notations on what a team knows or does not know can have inherent consequences to what the team is trying to achieve. The outcomes may not be negative all of the time but it is safe to assume that human error in group situations such as this can lead to bad decision making. Not having or evaluating all of the data plays into the decision making process as well, and that  is why it is important to get the  necessary information in order to make an informed decision. This disaster could have been avoided if the team would have just exhausted all possible options instead of dismissing certain alternatives without basis, and made assumptions about camera resolution. In short gathering and analyzing data for decision making can make or break what you are trying to achieve.

Engine Trouble?!

In the case concerning carter racing, I believed that they should have raced initially. I say initially because after further analysis several other factors become significant that may have an influence upon the situation. At first analysis it seems that they have something to lose in every situation or at least that's what I drew from a first read. It seemed to me that it would be wise to take the situation which had the least amount of losses, and in this case would be not to race. My views were persuaded to see the other way when we entered our groups. Within my group we discussed the pros and cons and came to a reasonable consensus that racing would be the most profitable decision. This view was even more influenced by the in class assessment of the statistical data within the case. Having numbers to put with the data made the decision even clearer to me. Facts and data make the decision easier to evaluate and are always useful in determining what choice you should make in a situation. Statistical application of data within a decision making problem is an invaluable resource that should almost always be used. I say almost because some situations can't or won't be able to use pure statistical analysis to determine the correct course of action. At the end of the analysis it was revealed that this situation was actually real data collected from the events leading up to the shuttle Challenger explosion. Now we don't have all the information here. We especially don't have the perspective of the scientists and engineers that control shuttle operations at NASA, but every piece of data we are given after evaluation, points toward aborting the race/shuttle launch. Why did they still decide to launch? I do not know, but this situation highlights very much why data needs to be statistically analyzed in decision making process. The correct decision needs to be made with ALL the facts present. Nothing can be ignored no matter how small and it is important to take everything into account.

Groupthink!

Group think is a phenomana that is a detremental to a working team or group. It happens when teams seem to have a certain level of conformity for ideas and generated by the group or in this case one individual. Groups that are plagued by this issue generally turn out to be groups that may have not formed correctly or may even be under performing groups. I believe that this is a major issue that needs to be confronted within a group setting. If it is not addressed it can have adverse consequences for the group. Performance is definitely affected by not allowing new ideas in the group to flourish and it often leads to a  mediocre result in group work. It can also have affects on the individual members as well by alienating them. Sometimes members of the group may try to present a new direction or idea. This idea may in turn get denied attention due to group think and the team dynamics may suffer in the process. Combating this problem is important and needs to be taken seriously. If it is not disastrous consequences may occur which may derail the entire group and the goal everyone is trying to work towards. I believe that one of the best ways to combat this problem is communication. Having a better communicating group will slow if not stop the group think all together. Simple introspective discussions about the groups progress and direction maybe enough to stave off the horrible group think mentality. Among other solutions which may be found in the article I believe that straight communication on a progressive level can help stop group think before it starts.

Teams That Curve

The team performance curve is a interesting model. It starts off by showing how teams or groups develop or start out on the curve. It then shows the evolution of the possible categories of team development and the different levels at which teams can operate with efficiency.

In the article the team performance is compared to the Cosmo make up company and how a specific product line is not picking up sales. They use this team performance curve to evaluate why some parts of Cosmo maybe under performing. This type of performance curve is invaluable when looking at team dynamics and seeing if some teams are effective at working together. Time can be saved and more efficiently distributed by using this sort of evaluation in an applicable way. Teams can know where they stand on the chart and gain feedback on if they need to improve, or may even disband. In the end there are several factors which can improve a team. They are addressed at the end of the article and explain how teams improve if they utilize these resources and come together properly. The five signs are: themes and identity, enthusiasm and energy level, event drive histories, personal commitment, and performance results. These five factors may serve as a wind sock of sorts for testing and monitoring team performance in an organizational work environment. This model is very applicable and seems to be effective for real world evaluation.

Wal-Mart, Hates Girls!

This article rubbed off on me in a really bad way, it highlighted for me the blatant biases that Wal-Mart has against women in its corporation. I'm aware that some people may not believe that there is a bias or that Wal-Mart is being outright discriminatory but please allow me to convince you otherwise. I'd like to start by saying that there could be more detailed information from the investigation to go on except the material we read in class, I am aware that there could always be more facts but we were handed this information and by the way the facts are point it is point to discriminatory practices. The majority of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores in management positions in 2001 were customer service managers. About 90% of women, and only about 15% were involved with the position of store management. Now here is a big discrepancy already, I see a large majority of women in a lower level management position and a disproportionate number of men above them. Now any number of factors could be at work here such as maternity leave, willingness to get promoted, etc but just from these numbers alone I find it hard to believe that they are the sole cause of the gender polarization on Wal-Marts management. Another fact I'd like to highlight is the salary difference for men and women. Wait there is a difference? Yes there is and its consistent. All through the companies employee ladder, women make less than men. At some levels it is blatant and obvious, at others it is small. However, no matter how big or small, it is still there. Now as I will reiterate to you, we don't have nearly enough info on any legal level to determine if there is in fact true discriminatory practice going on here, but from the information we do have, it certainly looks like there is discrimination going on. I will end this by putting icing on the proverbial cake. The Supreme Court of the United States of America, did NOT throw out the case because they could not prove discrimination, they threw out the case because they could not prove that the company had a comapny wide policy of discriminating against women, and thus could not try it as a class action lawsuit.

Theories, about theories!

I would like to start off by saying that while reading the short excerpt from Stephen Hawking's book, "A Brief History of Time" I have realized that science is an ever evolving fact finding expedition. Nothing in science or in this case Astronomy is ever really set in stone. It is all malleable and shaped through endless observations, studies, and experiments that are meant to find the truth behind why something works. This intrigues me because knowing what we know now, we can say that certain postulations about how processes worked in the past were wrong, because we know how they work now. This statement is false because in another few hundred years we may have been postulating faulty theories about processes we thought we knew about. Stephen Hawking writes about this in particular by stating that scientific theories can never be fully absolute or fully realized. This now gets a little into the realm of philosophy because it shines on the possibility that we can never truly understand or even experience anything in the universe because of the limitations of our consciousness. The void this leaves on me, of never truly knowing or understandins disturbing to me, and I hope to understand as much as I can for as long as I'm alive.