3rd Place but Still a Success

       Prior to winter break of my junior year, I signed up for a group case competition. The case was structured to be a month long. You and three other team members, who you were free to chose, worked on the case provided by Deloitte for winter break. When you returned the case competition was structured as:

• Day One: Present to a team of 3 of the university's  College of Business faculty members
• Day Two: Present to a panel of 5 professionals from various consulting organizations

    My team was composed of two friends of mine, Shivam and Kurt, and then Kurt's friend Matt who I had an acquaintences relationship with. Shivam had never met Kurt or Matt, so the relationship between them was casual as project partners. I created the following "relationship chart", similiar to an organizational chart to help understand the relationship of the group dynamic as opposed to a team dynamic.

    Since Shivam is from California and Kurt is from Georgia, we had to initially work on the project over winter break via conference calls. It was difficult at first because there wasn't a solid relationship between the group. It was what Katzenbach and Smith would refer to as a group, not a team. We would all present our research we had done those past few days and then review the analysis. However, there wasn't a sense of open collaboration because there was no relationship foundation. Having a virtual team structure was difficult and Kurt had attempted to take a leadership role. It was difficult for the group to respect that though since we were unable to have face to face interactions and there was no clear "team leader" role that needed to be defined. 

    We came back to campus and finally met for the first time to pull together the presentation. To be honest, it started off as incredibly awkward. Kurt tended to dominate the group, Matt was a second semester senior who just wanted to finish the case competition, Shivam did not appreciate Kurt's dominating attitude, and I struggled to balance large amounts of work with the demand of the case competition. After a few late nights of putting in research and fighting over whose analysis was best, we finally started to migrate from a group to a team.

   It seemed odd that the group would form a team working hard late at night, but its exactly what Katzenbach and Smith touch on. Teams come together when you put time and effort into forming a team structure that works. We would take breaks from working to order takeout and show each other new music and one night we stopped working early and took a trip to Red Lion together. After developing a social relationship, we were able to start actually working together as a team.

    The quality of slides, analysis, and effort greatly increased when we came together because we felt accountable to each other. The difference was clear in our performance. The initial slide deck we had created from our phone calls had greatly improved due to the quality of work we were all putting in. It showed too: we moved on from day one to the final rounds day two where only three teams presented to the final panel of professionals.

    We recieved third place (I blame it on competiting against two other teams of all MBAs...), but we had definetly developed the strongest sense of team dynamic. One of the final round judges came over during awards and asked us how we knew each other. When we explained our relationship, he said it was clear that we were all close because our performance had the most evidence of a team relationship. Our presentation skills were stronger because we were able to bounce off each other and our recommendation had come together as a result of mutual effort from everyone on our team.

   The key take away from this project that relates to Katzenbach and Smith is that team structures develop from groups as a result of individuals whose contribution is made to further group performance. They don't evaluate success based on how well they do, but they work hard to deliver a successful result for the entire group. They don't have the mentality of "I do everything for this group", instead they think "I am doing extra to help the group". This was a project focused group: the case competition was our project and we were working to meet that performance. The success of the case competition that led us to final rounds was a result of the time spent not only on the project but as developing ourselves as a team outside of the project. An updated relationship chart representing the team dynamic can be seen below.

    

Opportunism: Not Taking Advantage of the Situation

         As career fairs and interview season is in full swing I decided to write about a hot topic within the job search: the fine line between networking and connections to get you ahead. All of the time people say things such as, "they only got their job because they knew __________ who worked there". It is not always clear whether using connections to get a job is considered networking or if it is taking advantage of the relationships you have to get ahead. Is it truly opportunism or is it just leveraging your resources?

          One day I sat on a panel for economics students for other students discussing how we got our internships. I was chatting with one of the girls prior to the panel on how she had gotten her job at Boeing. I told her that when I had gotten my internship, I had reached out to the recruiter through a contact I had known. Her story was slightly different. She explained that she was adamently against using connections to get a job, she wanted to get jobs based on her own merit and hard work.

          The girls aunt had work for Boeing and she knew she wanted to work there. The opportunity to use her aunt as leverage to get the job is clear: reach out and ask her if she knows anyone that can help her get the job; it is an easy choice to help you stand out above other candidates who may be equally if not more qualified, but she didn't do that. Instead she attended career fairs, info nights, and even drove up to Chicago to attend on eof their expos. She wanted to get the job on her own, not leverage what was easy.

        The girl ended up getting the job and never even told her aunt she worked there until the end of the summer internship so she could make connections at the company on her own, be fairly evaluated, and not always be thought of as "_________'s niece".

          From her experience, I thought alot about opportunism within getting a job and how people do that and I tried to seperate when I think leveraging connections is ethical vs. unethical. While she never involved her aunt, I don't always think it is necessary. In this situation I broke it down in to my opinion of ethical and unethical opportunism which I have described below for this situation.

• Unethical Opportunism from Leveraging Connections: If you use connections because your own merit/ skill set would not get you the job on your own. If there is no way you would directly get the job on your own, using a connection to get you the job is unethical opportunism because you are taking the opportunity from a qualified candidate, you are putting the organization at a disadvantage from hiring a less qualified individual that does not provide as much contribution to the organization, and it is causing inefficiency by not having the best inputs (labor) to produce outputs (organizational capital).
• Ethical Opportunism for Leveraging Connections: This is if you use your connections to help you network because you are a qualified candidate and using the connections/networks you have built helps you stand out among a large talent pool. You would have been able to get the job on your own, but this networking helps you stand out from the rest to develop a competitive advantage over individuals.

      While I think this does a good job of summarizing what ethical/unethical opportunism is in this situation, like any economic scenario there is a level of uncertainty. Here this occurs in measuring of qualification: how do you know if you are qualified/unqualified for the position? If you chose to leverage a connection and you are unqualified how would you know if you get the job? If you don't leverage a connection and you are qualified how would you know if you didn't get the job? How can you settle differing perspectives of qualifications? Maybe some companies prefer people that already have networks, how do you eliminate that variable? There is always some level of uncertainty that blurs the clear division of unethical and ethical opportunism.

Organizational Development

The summer following my sophmore year I began my first internship. It was with a biopharma company that had recently split off from one of the leading pharmaceutical companies. The companies had been seperate now for about eighteen months, but they were still working on seperating themselves and developing their own brands.

While developing their own unique "brand" the organization was still bound by many systems and processes put in place by the original executive board of their parents companies. With the split there were a variety of contracts that were put in place. Many of these contracts began with the intention of having our company have an "adjustment" period to develop our own standards before splitting off. These contracts were overseen by the ATO or the "Agreements Transitions Organizations". This group was solely seen as the mediators who oversaw all the contracts through to the end and acted as a liason between our company and the parent company.

I worked in Corporate Finance supporting Corporate Administration. My project for the summer was to assist in the purchasing of an aviation fleet that was jointly owned between us and parent company. At the 18 month mark, we were to officially own 50% of the fleet and they would own the remaining half. While this had an accounting cost that could be seen in the purchase of X% amount of the fleet and a sale of Y% of our fleet, it also had transactional costs. There were a few different types of transactional costs that were incorporated in this purchase.

• Since we were contractual bound by the parent company to purchase X% amount of fleet and sell Y% amount of our fleet to end in a 50/50 ownership of the fleet, there was a cost to developing that contract with legal and then enforcing it through the ATO group.
• Additionally, the fleet that we had purchased was used. The aviation fleet was coming close to the end of their useful life, so there was a transaction cost in looking for replacement fleet that met business demand as well as price constraints.
• When we ultimately decided to replace the planes, there was a transaction costs in finding a third party to sell of the airplanes and then paying them to do the actual brokerage for the sale of the useful parts of the plane.

This summer internship was a great test to what a traditional corporate finance role as well as the significance of understanding organizational and industry effects on individual transactions.

Powerful Females in Economics: A Peak into the Life of Elinor Ostrom

    Elinor Ostrom, a former professor at the Indiana University was the first female to win a Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences. This captured my attention immediately when beginning my research for this Econ 490 post because of my interest in women in leadership positions, especially within my major of economics.

   I read a few biographies and notes regarding Elinor Ostroms career, but the most powerful one came from a rememberance site by Indiana University. One of the reasons that I felt I connected with the post most was because it directly linked Elinor Ostrom to the Economics of Organizations. Her prize winning research was regarding how ordinary people can set up rules and institutions that allow shared resources to be managed. Economics of Organizations is a key field of study because it is theory on real life phenomenons, Elinor Ostrom did research to justify how exactly these phenomenas happen.

   "Economics is the study of how people satisfy unlimited wants with scarce resources". My high school AP Economics teacher defined Economics as that on the first day of class, I have never forgetten it since then and it is how I start off all of my Economic class notes each semester. It is what guides the principles of how our everyday actions occur. Elinor Ostrom recieved numerous awards, some including the Time 100 in 2012,for working cross-functionally and cross-disciplinary to explain how economic theory such as the Tragedy of the Commons works in action in real life.

   Upon my research on Elinor Ostrom, it wasn't her upbringing or academic background that blew me away, but her ability to apply economic theory and principles to explain why organizations and society functions the way it does. She demonstrates the significance of putting economics into action which I found to be intriguing and relatable.

   I hope to take Elinor Ostrom's approach of applied economics and search to bridge the connection between economic theory and the real world when studying Econ 490 as well as in my career going forward beyond graduation.