Amy Finkelstein

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...

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,...

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 ...

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 ...