Conflict so bizarre it's funny

I normally don't take course content from the ESPN Web site, but since next week we will be talking about managing conflict within organizations, I thought this one appropriate.   It shows blood is thicker than water.

Second Set of Team Presentations

We should allocated these tomorrow, or Thursday at the latest.  These are each from B&D, on the Politics Frame.  They are:

4/12  B&D Chapter 9 on Power, Conflict, and Coalition

4/19  B&D Chapter 10 on The Manager as Politician

4/26  B&D Chapter 11 - Organizations as Political Arenas

Note that we will have discussion of blog posts before the presentations.  The prompts will be relevant for these topics.

Instead of evaluation of comments....

...I constructed this comment matrix.  This is only measuring who commented on posts.  It doesn't say anything at all about comment quality.  We'll discuss this briefly tomorrow.

The Write Stuff

Since the class has been blogging for a while, you can all consider yourselves writers.  Writing is both about the ideas and about how well the ideas are expressed.  On the latter, you might get some insight from this post, the first in a new blog from the NY Times.

Follow up to previous post

This Joe Nocera column is a good read and it is a nice way to tie the Goldman issue to our course, since it point out two distinct ways, with Starbucks the emblem of the alternative approach to Goldman.

Whistle Blowing on Goldman Sachs

This piece is astounding for the frank accusations regarding the corporate culture within Goldman Sachs.  And it's quite relevant to our discussion about moral hazard in organizations.

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com via kwout

Asset Equations and Moral Hazard

We didn't fully cover the last slide in the PowerPoint from today.  So I will start with that on Thursday.  It is a puzzle.  Let me see if I can explain the issue here.

The asset equation that I briefly showed is from this document, on page 3.  The important point to note is how we typically interpret such an equation.  The asset value, "A," is measured in current time, that is the value of the asset today.  The return "a₁" happens 1 period into the future.  Similarly, the return "a_t" happens t periods into the future.  In other words, the asset value is the sum of the appropriately discounted future returns.

On the other hand, in assessing the reputation of an individual, we typically look at past performance.   Typically, the rule of thumb is to trust somebody who has had strong past performance and to distrust somebody else who has had weak past performance.

The puzzle is how in one case can the reputational asset be forward looking only while in the the other case where we assess the assess we are backward looking only.  Can that make sense?  If so, how?

Assessment of your work in Moodle

I've now set up two different discussion groups in Moodle.  One is for your individual work.  The other is for your team work.  Each student should now have a written assessment of their individual work called Blog Posts - First Half.  If this functions the way it is supposed to, you should be able to read your own assessment but not see the assessment of any other student.  Please let me know if that is the case.

I've also done an assessment of the Cool Kids' presentation from last Tuesday.  From here on out, I will try to do team assessments a day or so after the presentation has occurred.

Later this week I'll provide some assessments of the comments you've done so far.

The week after break I'll assign the second presentations, which will be from B&D.

A Pretty Appropriate Piece for Tomorrow's Class

This one is from the Washington Post. It's interesting, tongue in cheek, and a quick read.

On a separate point, sorry to be late with the PowerPoint or tomorrow.  It is up now.

Writing Tip

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
       -- Stephen King