Thursday, September 12, 2013
Organization and transactional cost
I just started working in the Advancement Office under International Program Studies in U of I. My department is focusing on managing alumni relationship within international student, planning for donation and gifts for IPS, and promoting our college in a wider range of social media, including Sina Weibo and Wechat (Chinese popular social media). Our department need to report to IPS executive office, and IPS is under associate provost for international affairs. Comparing to other department and international student organization, we are quite small by just having two full-time and two student workers. I need to communicate our plans with another student interns and report my work to either the director or officer of the department. Because the communications within the department are quite straightforward, I assume that we actually minimize transaction cost within the department by using lots of face-to-face communication.
However, from my interview in last semester till now, there is a minor change within IPS office. We used to have a campus & public engagement department to do some outside communication. People decided to dismiss this office and merger its communication personnel to our department. Two people, who are responsible for social media strategies in Facebook and Twitter and management of Illinois International website, join our department. It is a reasonable transformation in organizational structure because we can save times in communicating our communication strategies cross-department. Moreover, our department is also trying to reach some new social media products, such as Pinterest. Having people who are in charge of different social media platform together will be helpful in generating ideas and reducing the uncertainty in unifying our communication strategies. I also think that it is better for us to promote different social media on others and enlarge the dimensions of our audience.
I think the change in structure of organization reduces the transactional costs. Even if we did not necessarily involve with large transactional cost within my department, we need to inform and communicate with other department when we come up new ideas. This may cost time in writing proposals and setting up meetings. However, merging some relevant personnel together can reduce the cost and effort of communication outside organization from my department’s viewpoint. In a larger scale, considering the change based on IPS office’s perspectives, I believe that they reduce the cost in management and complexity of the organization. Even if the total salary they paid has not been changed because no one gets fire. The integration of two department and different communication channels may save their time and increase efficiency.
On the other hand, the merging of personnel might involve with additional cost in payments and staff training. All students workers involved with advancement should participate in training that takes around 10 hours. This would be a sunk cost for every new employers. They might also increase the risk on confidential information because there might be more people have rights to access those information. But until now, I think people from the original communication department still concentrate on their fields. It is good because there will be less waste in human resource and everyone's tasks have not been influenced by the transformation of organization's structure.
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Our campus is a complex place, as I've commented in class already multiple times. Advancement happens not just at at the campus level, but also within the colleges and sometimes within individual departments as well.
ReplyDeleteI mention this because the merger you talked about is at the campus level. It may indeed be sensible, but it may still not make for a fully coherent message to alumni and others outside the university.
When I was in the College of Business, I interacted with the folks who did Advancement for the college. They had their own applications for communicating with alumni.
I was somewhat surprised that while you mentioned Facebook and Twitter you did not mention LinkedIn. It seems to me that advancement is tied to employment of our graduates and an alumni network might be helpful in establishing connections in that regard.
In any event, it is a complex matter as people tend to operate in multiple arenas, some of which overlap and alumni giving is motivated by multiple factors as well. Early on it may be just to stay connected with the place. Later it may be a way to signify appreciation for the opportunities provided.
I think advancement offices exist in different level and department. The advancement office I worked is under International Program Studies So our goals are mainly focused on international level, such as maintaining relationship with international alumni and planning donations for international affairs (study abroad program, emergency fund for international students) in the college.
DeleteI agree that the merger might not make sense to people outside the university. The major applications for communicating with alumni are still mailing and newsletter. The full-time employer in my office will also build up personal relationship with potential donors and visit them when they travel abroad. Another task of IPS advancement department is doing publicity of International Illini in different social media. In our external communication, we almost do the same thing. But for internal communication, the merger will make it easier to strategize our plans and have more collaboration.
I double checked the communication methods we have and found out that we did not have a LinkedIn. This should be the problem I need to talk to my boss immediately! I guess they have concerns like LinkedIn is not the pervasive in other countries. We've already got an official account for UIUC. And developing another group for international student and alumni is really a brilliant idea!
Professor Arvan, thanks for your comment! I am really inspired by your idea and its meaning is far more than just an Econ class : )
I think it is very interesting that you work for the advancement office for the International Program Studies. Your experience seems to duplicate many of the structural examples we discussed in class because it specifically deals with the University.
ReplyDeleteWhile merging some of the communication personnel seems to decrease transaction cost due to the ability to now be able to communicate directly to them, I wonder if any of the new personal had to alter their strategies to fit the now perhaps more specific customer/donor they are trying to attract.
I also was curious as to what happens if these student were part of a different specific college like business or engineering, both of which have their own departments for Advancement. Do these departments contact them as well?
Because we are a relatively new department, we are still figuring out the best strategies and the way for new personal to communicate. Due to the emerge of new social media platforms, we will sometimes add new strategies and tasks. Sometimes it will have higher transaction cost because people need more training and time to adapt.
DeleteMy colleague is a student from engineering department. Even though some departments have their advancement, I don't think we will contact with them very often. In some cases, there is a competitive relationship between different advancement office because our university have rules for alumni tracking. If one department have already contacted an alum, other department cannot repeat this step.
Your work sounds very interesting, and this year I will also be working on a similar sort of project through Illinois Business Consulting. I believe alumni relations, particularly with our international students is one of the best things the university can do. Something interesting I learned last year was that the majority of Nobel Prizes earned by alumni of the University of Illinois were given to either former international students or students who were not native to the United States!
ReplyDeleteThe stratification of working in the university is also something I've observed as well. An action group may start as something small, but as it gets rolling more and more people will be added to the team as specialists for jobs which upon starting out weren't even thought of. I think it speaks a lot to the success and necessity of your organization that you are adding people to your team.
I have several friends working in Illinois Business Consulting too. Alumni network is an important part for the university and other RSOs. However, the alumni database in our university is single language and it will be difficult to collect international alumni information. That's the reason why international program and studies hire students to build up their own database to reach alumni in Chinese spoken countries.
DeleteWhen the tasks are limited, we don't need so many people to finish the job. And hiring more people will increase the costs in human resources. However, I think we can network with wider groups of people to get success. I think that's another aspect of adding people.