Reflection

Reflecting on the four blog posts I have written, I was able to tie and find a keyword link the prompts together. I have to confess that I was very much confused at first. I did not understand how each course taught tied to the weekly blog posts, although I put in much thought into writing one. I thought of the tasks as separate topics. I believe I was not eager enough to learn what the linkage and the purpose of each assignment was carefully.

However, now I know that there are common themes and the one that stood out to me the most is called transaction cost. It is much obvious now that we have talked about it in class and through the explanation of how each lecture lead to another one. The first blog post, which was about transaction cost in organization, is itself clearly delivering the idea of transaction coast. This is the blog post that introduced me to what a real-world transaction cost is: an extra work that I have to commit to on top of the responsibilities. Now, I consider what in life that I am doing, whether in work or not, are costs that are incurring, which is an interesting thought that I have never been exposed to. Opportunism post revolved around my transaction cost when interacting with an opportunists. In this blog post, I related to the idea of transaction cost less, but is definitely related: the work that I had to commit to, because others were not actively taking a part. Teamwork blog post, where I talked about my experience in a self-managing team, or team with less guidance, definitely also had a connection to transaction cost that I had to endure going through a team setting like so. Lastly, while it was less obvious for me to connect, but Illinibucks blog post, or Illinibucks itself is a transaction cost incurring in order to get ahead of a group in the line. Just to briefly mention, these are all possible scenarios because I was in an organization, or at least in a team more than one person. Since this course is about economics of organization, the idea of organization ties in very well.

The process of writing posts have changed a lot for me throughout the weeks. At first, despite that our identity is covered by our alias, I did not feel comfortable sharing my own story. I know no one from the class, but I still felt very insecure about sharing my story, which were sometimes showing a little ugly side of myself. I once also thought about making up a story to make my post more related to the prompt. However, I soon realized that coming up with a whole new story is harder and much more time consuming that illustrating my experience. I also now understand the importance of illustrating in extensive details. I was first very intimidated by the fact that I have to write more than 600 words, but in order for the readers, both the professor and my classmates, to understand my feeling, I need to convey the setting and situation clearly, which could justify(?) my feeling.

A suggestion I have for future prompt is: “Within an organization that already had a very established way of working, have you had an experience where you changed it so that you can perform more efficiently?” This is an interview question that I was asked few days ago, and thought it is very relevant to the course. Firstly, it revolves around organization. We can talk about the outcome that were both positive and negative. Also, we can also talk about what were the reasons of going about changing the established route. The cultural background that I grew up is very different from the prompt. I was almost always believed that following the established way is the right way and that there is a reason behind why an organization chooses one way over others. Frankly, I may have been lazy to not think of a way to optimize the process. Right after the interview, however, I also realized suggesting a way that I can think of is never bad, since in this culture, sharing can act as the catalyst to evolve a process to a much cost effective one.