Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Review and critique for Econ 490

During this course, I have learned many useful aspects about organization. The one that influenced me the most is about triangular tension in companies because it might be common in my future working place. As I have mentioned before, I want to become a financial advisor after graduating; therefore, I might be involved in this "triangular tension" between my boss and clients as well. Methods including having enought conversations with supervisors and clear regulations are important for me to solve possible problems.

During class, I believe it might be useful for students to form small groups and discuss topics; therefore, students can be more involved in and prepared during classtime. For blogging, I think the current way is fine. However, I do suggest that students are required to comment in different peers' blogs instead of having only one or two partners for the entire semester. In that way, students can get different perspectives from different students and be more familar with more students. On the other hand, I learned a lot from the current blogging system as well by having professor and one classmate commenting on and improving my opinions. Also, blogging allows me to take more time thinking about topics that I have never thought before such problems in organizations.

When I was doing Excel Homework, I read over classnotes, ppt and videos, if there are any,  in advance in order to be more familar with the topic. Then I began with the Excel from the start. If I faced any difficulties, I would turn back to notes or asked through comments. For blogging, I would read the relevant pages of textbook to get the basic idea. I would also search on the Internet if necessary, especially when I was not familar with the topic. After gaining enough backgrounds about the topic, I would begin writing.

I believe this course is pretty much it is. I am very satisfied with experiences in the class as well. If we can add more discussions and activities during the class, I believe it would be more interesting.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Reputation about organizations

I want to discuss Facebook's reputation about its working environment and culture in this case because I was impressed by it. I used read some articles about Facebook's working environment and I think Facebook is reknown for it.

In order to complete this blog, I searched some pictures and reviews about it. I could not imagine how a company like this could incent its employees instead of making them lazy in the office. I believe the most important reason for Facebook to create such as open and relaxed working culture is to "free" people because it needs innovations instead of conventions. I have noticed a small detail from one picture: chairs are not in their regular forms but look like books. These innovative lead Facebook employess to be innovative and compose one of the greatest company in the world. The other reason that I can think of is that Facebook create this working environment in order to attract the most talented people. We all know that the importantce of human capitals begins to exceed that of physical capitals in such a highly competitive market. Facebook has many competitors such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Therefore, it needs to create this kind of reputation in order to attract the best employees and become more competitive. Last but not least, I believe Facebook's working load is high although it has relaxed working environment. Free working environment allows employees to relieve from heavy working load.

Many companies these days begin to learn from Facebook about this reputation in order to attract qualified employees, especially in high technology makets. Although I am not a "Science" person, I do want to have an opportunity to work or at least visit in Facebook and feel its working environment by myself one day.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Personal reputation

My high school student union members always regard me as a reliable person in activities; therefore, when we have teamwork to finish, they always invite me to join in their team. I think this kind of reputation is built gradually through my daily performence during school. For instance, when we have works to do in a given period of time, I often contacted with other members in order to distribute the work as soon as possible. Beside, I tried to finish my part at my earliest convenience; therefore, I could find any problems and deal with them. My classmates used me to tell me that if I was in their group, they would not worry about the project any more.

Usually, I felt good about their trust. I continued trying to do the best job and leading the group with any work. I did not make any special efforts to maintain this reputation; on the other hand, I just maintained my regular working attitudes. Although it is time-consuming and tired to always keep track of works, I found it was pleasant and necessary to keep on working in this attitude.

However, I indeed abandoned my reputation in certain situations in the past. For instance, I remembered the period of time that I needed to prepare my SAT and Tofle test and was under huge pressures for my college application, I did not want to spend a large amout of time on doing extra activities in the student union and I even considered about quiting it. At that time, I always procrastinated and complained about doing too much works. When I went through the application and received relatively sastified good result, I feld regretful and sorry for my group members because I have ruined their trust for me during those weeks. During the following months before I graduated from high school, I devoted much more time in the student union in order to compensate for my mistakes and I had resumed my reputation for my hard working.

I believe it is good to accumulate good reputation because it represents trust from your peers or families to you. Although I might abandon the reputation in some special situations, I try to compensate for my mistakes in order to regain my reputation. Therefore, I will find myself to be a worthwile person.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Triangle arrangement

I have determined to become a personal financial analyst ever since I chose Economics as my major. I believe this arrangement among personal financial analysts, firms and clients are forming a triangle arragement. Personal financial analysts are the core of the triangular arrangement, connecting firms and clients.

Clients and firms do not always agree with each other, especially regarding with their profits. Clients want financial analysts to work for them as much time as possible but firms want to save their costs and their time in order to maximize their profits. For instance, I have read in a book about financial institutions that financial analysts need about six weeks to find detailed sources in to obtain perfect conclusions; however, firms only give analysts about four weeks to work with a client. In this four weeks, most analysts can only reach approximate conclusions for clients rather than exact results. Some clients are not satisfied with the difference and result in conflicts among these three parties.

In order to resolve this tension, many financial analysts choose to work for extra hours for clients but restrict to their schedules with their firms. This fact might be a big reason about financial analysts always need to be hard working and overloaded. Clients might also be able to pay more money to firms in order to obtain more advanced services from firms and financial analysts.

In my own opinion, I believe there is another way to resolve the problem: set up regulations to regulate both firms and clients. For instance, if there are regulations to decide how many hours in minimum firms need to provide for clients in certain situations. Therefore, there might not be as many conflicts and problems as there currently are.

The triangular arrangement is difficult and confusing. It is possible to implement regulations and make cores to do extra workings in order to resolve the tension.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

2 parallel experiences

People who are working together for one goal hold different backgrounds and perspectives; therefore, it is very likely to have conflicts when they are cooperating. I have joined in a variety of activities, both in school and out of school and all of these experiences involve some levels of conflicts in the middle. Generally, I would like to say that most of experiences during my internships were peaceful and fruitful but some experiences in the school with students and friends had more arguments.

During the three-month internship, I hardly had any conflicts with group members and supervisors. I believe the major reason for this fact was all interns appreciated the opportunity to work in the firm and wanted to leave great impressions for others. For instance, when we had different ideas with each other in group works, we tended to illustrate and analyze all points of view before reaching the conclusion. Meanwhile, we were nice to each other. Also, when seniors assigned tasks for us, all people tried their best. I would like to say that we had really harmonious working enviornment. However, I do not believe this harmony has anything to do with personalities or backgrounds; instead, interns tried to perform nice in order to leave great impressions to leaders. The other reason for us to have agreeable working condition was the function of seniors. Since seniors had more experiences and skills than most of our interns, they could resolve small conflicts among us very quickly; therefore, we would be on the right track again.

However, based on my experiences in school activities, I indeed found out that people were frequently engaged in conflicts. The primary reason for those conflicts that I can think of is that students do not care too much about others' attitudes toward them. To be detailed, is seniors in the company do not have good impressions about interns, these interns are unlikely to have opportunities to work for the company again; however, if students are a little bit harsh on their classmates during a group project, the consequence is very small. The other reason might be that there is no "absolute leader" in school activities; students are freely to express their own opinions without any concerns. Therefore, it is more likely to engage in unpleasant arguments in school activities.

In conclusion, I believe different situations influence a lot on whether people would engage in conflicts a lot. Other factors such as personalities, talents and commitments indeed are influential as well.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Share the Marbles

    I have learned about the Game of Marble in my Psychology class and I found it was very interesting at that time. I do not believe that there is any perfect equality in the society since all people are striving for their own profits. It is common that people want to get payments but do not want to much many efforts. Some people are indeed more weathier than the rest of us, in different ways. Some of them gain their wealth from heritage and some of them might earn incomes from hard working. I do not believe that it is fair or efficient to charge the wealth in order to help the poor.
    I have encountered many times from past experiences that group members tried to extract from the most responsible and talented members. I used to be in a psychology research group with several undergraduate students and graduate students and our main topic was "how does the feeling of emotion affect peoples' behaviors". However, our group members came from different areas in the psychology department; therefore, many of us did not have strong backgrounds in this field. We relied on those graduate students who were more expert in the topic. To be detailed, they needed to do most of the research and tests. They assigned readings for us in order to give us more backgrounds about the research area; however, many students even did not do those readings because they believed that graduate students would finish up the research in any way. In the end, we did not complete the research successfully. From this experience, I no longer believe that it was efficient for some people to contribute more into tasks even though they might be at the prior position. If the professor could give all of us more time understanding the research topic and accumulating knowledge, I believed that we could do much better.
    As a result, I believe governments or organizations are not supposed to ask the more capable people to contribute more but given the same share of profits for all participants.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Transfer Pricing on Campus

    In such a big university like UIUC, students are always competiting because resources are limited. For instance, libraries or labs are filled with students, especially during final weeks; dining halls are so crowded that I can hardly find a place to eat; residence halls have limited rooms that cannot allocate all students on the campus. The course selecting system is also busy. Departments arrange times according to students' status: whether they have Jame's Scholar and the number of credit hours. If there is an innovation in our school to have Illinibucks, I think I will buy them because they can make my life easier and more efficient.
    Illinibucks can be used for all things I have mentioned above and some other important aspects, including dining, housing, library facilities, ARC equipments, parking lots and course selection orders.
    I believe that the price of Illinibucks cannot be high. I might be willing to pay a fair amount of money in order to select courses earlier because I can choose better a better schedule and more suitable courses. However, I will not pay much for housings or dinings because I have other choices by eating in other restaurants and living off-campus. I think most of students have similar thoughts with me. If the price of Illinibucks is too high, I might not buy them at all because I do not feel I can get sufficient benefits for my costs. It is also not appropriate to make the price too low. If the price of Illinibucks is very low, most of students will pay for them; therefore, it is still impossible to distinguish students. As a result, it is essential for the school to determine an appropriate price for Illinibucks, incenting but distinguishing students.