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.