One organization that I’ve been part
of in school has been my social fraternity. The situation with my fraternity
was unique because the year I joined was the year that the fraternity came back
after being booted of campus for several years. At first, one might say that
their was no real organization since no one had assigned roles and everything
was sort of chaotic whether it was planning social events or planning community
service events. Once roles where assigned by the colony coordinator things
began to role more smoothly. Seven individuals, excluding the president, were
assigned certain roles each with their own sub committee. The colony
coordinator in charge of setting up the fraternity “coached” the selected
executive board in doing their individual job. For example, a certain
individual was in charge of overseeing social and community service events
while another members were in charge of overseeing new member education.
Members within those departments would then work under their respective “VP”.
For example, members in the programming committee were in charge of either
coming up with community service events or scheduling places for social events
and reporting to their respective “VP”.
Overall the organizational structure was pretty straightforward; the
committee members would work on their own specific jobs whether it was by
themselves or with a partner then they would report to the VP they worked
under. Depending on the VP, he would help out the committee members or just
oversee that everything was running smoothly. After committee members reported
to their VP, the VP would then update the president on how his department was
doing. Depending on the updates the president would then schedule meetings to
discuss with the exec board on what changes need to happen or to keep up the
good work. One problem that did occur during the first semester that the
executive board was in charge was that some exec members didn’t oversee their
committees. For example, the VP of programming would tell his committee members
what to do and the committee members would not finish the work that needed to
be done. When the time to report updates to the president came they would have
nothing to show for. On the other extreme of the spectrum, some VPs overstepped
their boundaries and would try to run other exec’s committees causing dilemmas
within the executive board.
Being involved while in college is a
transaction cost but a transaction cost that should help out in the future. One
of the first transaction cost I encountered when I first came to this
university as a freshman was spending time in searching organizations to join.
Though I did end up joining some worthwhile organizations I could have spent the
time looking for this organizations on something else such as studying more for
my classes. Another transaction cost I faced was paying to be a member of said
organizations. Though I do benefit and learn from these organizations I still
had to pay to be part of them. Being in this university overall is in itself a transaction
cost. We must pay thousands of dollars to remain in this university but we do
so in order to learn the essentials for a given career. Within the given
transaction costs we also face certain opportunity costs. We spend time, money,
and work hard in school to secure a better future instead of working straight
out of high school and earning money. As I mentioned earlier, I also faced
opportunity cost when deciding to join organizations instead of using my spare
time to study more. For example, my freshman year I was faced with the dilemma
of staying in and studying everyday of the week or perhaps joining a social
fraternity knowing the distractions and time commitment it came with, or
whether I should join a club relating to my major in order to gain experience
or just staying concentrated to my school work. Overall, one must think of the transaction cost and opportunity
cost in the long run while asking one’s self it certain decisions are worth it.
Before commenting on the post, let me note that part of the idea of your alias is to keep your actual identify private from the rest of the world outside our class. So I suggest that you delete your name at the top of the post.
ReplyDelete-------
As I have mentioned on the posts of several of your classmates, I am ignorant of things that you know quite well. For example, I never heard of a social fraternity before. I'm aware of fraternities where some people live. And I'm aware of other fraternities that are organized around some academic unit. In both cases I can imagine why one might join. What is the appeal of a social fraternity? I could have used a little explanation on that. In other words, I'd have preferred some more discussion before you got into the structure stuff.
You start out with something of a bombshell, about the organization having gotten booted off campus previously? But you didn't say why that happened or when it happened, so I couldn't tell whether this was essentially a new organization with an old name or if there was some continuity from the earlier incarnation of the organization. You also didn't say whether that mattered to you for joining. Did it, perhaps, give you some opportunities that you wouldn't have had with other social fraternities?
I don't know what a colony coordinator is, so when you said he assigned roles, I started to suspect he wasn't a student. It would have helped me better to understand more about that person. You said he coached the others in leadership roles. How did he know how to do this? It also sounded like that coaching stopped pretty early on. Is that right? If so, why was that?
Your second paragraph where you talk about transaction cost, what you are really saying is that your time spent in the organization has an opportunity cost. Indeed it does. Opportunity cost is an important economic idea. So is transaction cost. But they are different idea. Opportunity cost refers to potential alternative uses of the input, in this case your time. You actually gave some examples of transaction cost in your previous paragraph, though you might not be aware of it. For the VPs who didn't motivate and monitor the members of their committee to produce the report, the committee ended up with nothing to show. The motivation and monitoring of the committee members are examples of transaction costs. The writing of the report itself is a production cost. If the members had been sufficiently motivated themselves, the reports would have been written. That they weren't is evidenced that the transaction costs were not incurred.
Near the end of the paragraph you do talk as if transaction costs and opportunity costs are distinct, which indeed they are. But your example doesn't illustrate the distinction. That's the issue.