Upcoming Schedule

Below is the change of schedule I mentioned in the previous post along with some annotations about how you might best take advantage of it.

Blog Posts

Tonight there is a blog post due.  It is the first real one after last week's posting about your alias.  This one asks about your experiences in organizations.  I would like to spend some time on Monday, probably at the beginning of class discussing points culled from your posts.

There is no blog post due next week.  Partly that is simply because I will be unable to comment on the posts immediately after my procedure.  It is also partly to get the pace of the class better in tune.

The next blog post is due in two weeks.  The topic - refraining from behaving opportunistically - is important.  My preference is that you use an example other than not cheating while taking an exam.   I'm sure some of you don't cheat but are aware or believe that others do.  (And some of you might have cheated in the recent past, but writing about that would be weird.)  We might discuss this example in class.  But if it is the only example we discuss than it will be less interesting.  It would be much better to consider the issue in a variety of contexts.

I am cancelling class Monday the 24th, which is just a few days after my procedure.  That should give you more time to consider the blog post you will write and to help put together the various pieces that the class is considering.

Excel Homework

The next Excel Homework is due a week from today, on Coordination Failures and Coordinating Mechanisms.   We'll do a little bit next Wednesday on the Intern Matching program which is the concern of the second worksheet, but the first worksheet (which is simple but important) and the third worksheet on transfer pricing, we don't get to in class for a while.  I want you to do it early so you begin to get some perspective on the issues.

The third worksheet in that homework is about Transfer Pricing.  This is discussed in Milgrom and Roberts, but my tone and perspective is different than theirs.  Because they take the Efficiency Principle as truth, their analysis proceeds in a certain way.  But what happens if instead of bargaining, the parties act independently?  What then?  Might it be the case where parties create private benefit but inefficient group outcomes as a consequence?  This alternative possibility is more consistent with Bolman and Deal's political frame.  In essence, politics is the consequence of social inefficiency.

Upcoming Class Sessions

Next Monday in class when we conclude the discussion on efficiency that was started yesterday, I want to discuss via examples the issue of gaming the system or designing it.  I hope by doing that to make these ideas about Social Surplus and Pareto Optimality more real to you.

On Wednesday we'll discuss "the assignment problem" and discuss that from a couple of different perspectives.  One job of management is to solve the assignment problem.   If you've seen the movie, Eight Men Out, this scene might help in considering some of the issues (the first one at the link):
http://www.quotefully.com/movie/Eight+Men+Out/Charles+Comiskey

As I said above, I'm cancelling class the following Monday.  I'm also going to leave the mixture of doing modeling versus simply having discussion unspecified for now.  The reality of my procedure suggests that these things will fall out based on how I'm doing afterward.