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Williamson-like Critique

Throughout this class, I have greatly benefited from the soft deadlines and attendance policies; however, I also understand how there were overall cons to these practices as well. I have never been in a college course that cares so much about the stress of students and offers soft deadlines. In my opinion, these rules were very helpful in my life for personal reasons, but they were greatly appreciated. I believe that most students would have appreciated these rules at one point or another due to the hectic lives that everyone faces. However, I also understand how these rules can make it harder on the professor and result in students taking advantage of these rules. I believe that offering soft deadlines is a very nice thing to do for students considering it makes the grading timeline more difficult for the professor. After reading some of the other student’s blog posts, I felt that the soft deadlines helped out quite a bit of the class. This rule gave students the opportunity to m...
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Principle Agent Model

A situation where an agent deals with two different principles is usually very difficult if both parties are not open minded. In this type of “triangle” situation, it is important that there are channels of communication with every party involved; however, there are often situations where the agent can only satisfy one party. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of a triangle like arrangement that I have participated in is Illinois Business Consulting. Within this organization, I definitely experienced conflict due to having multiple managers on my consulting team and a client outside of the organization. In addition, I was able to witness various conflicts occur between the hierarchy of leaders in the entire organization. My team consisted of multiple consultants, a senior consultant, a project manager, and a senior manager. It was nice that we all attended client meetings and phone calls, so there was open communication with everyone on my team and our client. However,...
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Moderate Punishments

During my time in RSO’s and internships, I have noticed that positive reinforcement tends to make people more motivated and productive than negative reinforcement-such as a punishment. I believe that moderate punishments can help an employee stop a certain behavior; however, I do not think that moderate punishments motivate people to reach their full potential and highest level of productivity.  During my summer internship at First Midwest Bank, there was a summer intern that was not focused enough on dedicating enough time to the internship program. This intern had additional jobs outside of the program, which caused him to show up late, leave early, or work on unrelated tasks at the office. While working on a group project with him, I heard his manager yell at him as a form of discipline. I only witnessed it once, but I know this happened multiple times. I think this intern was somewhat fearful of the yelling, but not enough to change his actions. It seemed like he continued ...
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Income Risk

When I was a senior in High School, I was not admitted to the University of Illinois’ business school. At this point in my life, I knew that I wanted to major in something that was business related-either finance or marketing because I was never really introduced to Economics courses. I ended up going to the University of Iowa’s business school for a semester; however, I felt that the University of Illinois offered more opportunities that I was interested in such as business related organizations and study abroad programs. In addition, I took two economics courses while I was at the University of Iowa and became very interested in the subject. During my first semester, I decided to reapply to the University of Illinois for Economics instead of business. I don’t think my change in major was necessarily to manage my future income risk, but more to pursue a major that I enjoyed. I felt that my major in either business or economics would ultimately allow me to achieve my career goals, so ...
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Illinibucks

The concept of Illinibucks is extremely interesting because there are definitely students that would like to choose what they have priority in and what they don’t mind waiting for. This concept would allow students to spend their money in areas that they care about being prioritized. As long as the school allocates the same amount of illinibucks to all the students, I think this concept is fair. It would not allow wealthier students to purchase priority over others and the class standing of a student cannot impact their priority either. The concept of illinibucks would stop this and promote equality throughout campus. I have thought of various concepts throughout campus that Illinibucks could be used for. One of the first things that came to mind is picking out a dorm freshman year. Many students already know which dorm they want to live in during the admission process, while others do not care to decide until Summer. Currently there is a lottery system that randomizes who gets p...
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Effective Team Structures

I have been a part of various organizations on campus; however, I feel like I have been a part of a very successful team on Illinois Business Consulting. This organization is part of Geis College of Business, and it is student-run but has a couple faculty members that oversee it. The organization has over two-hundred undergraduate and graduate students in it. There are about twenty-five projects a semester with different teams of students assigned to them. The purpose for Illinois Business Consulting is to have students offer consulting solutions to various organizations around campus or large-scale companies internationally. This provides companies with a cheaper consulting solution, and it gives students real world consulting experience. I was able to work with a large-scale insurance company based out of New York City. The company wanted to implement a start-up data analytics tool for their human resources department. This tool was needed to help the company seek and maintain t...
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Opportunism

This is an interesting topic because the first thought that comes to my mind when people don’t act opportunistically when they have a chance is not due to an ulterior motive. Usually I would believe that people do just have good morals and are a “good citizen”. After analyzing opportunistic situations, I realized that there are often ulterior motives involved when people choose the ethical route. In my own situation, a chance I had to act opportunistically was during my summer internship. During a group project with 3 other interns, there was one intern that did not put in much work or help out with the presentation. Although my teammates tried to confront him, his work ethic did not change much and we decided to finish the work up ourselves. This was a little bit frustrating to pick up his slack, but the work was not that hard to complete. After my group presentation, all of the interns had interviews with the Company’s HR team to potentially sign for a full time job. During these i...
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