Two Principals Problem

As far as I am currently studying to get my public relation certificate, my intuition on this topic will be the task of a public relation practitioner. The structural model of associate in public relation is similar as the example of law firm. Public relation associate should report to both client and the firm. This is a common model in real world practice. Once we have clients, we need to balance both clients and company's needs.

If we consider the professor as the boss in company and the class is an organization, my project in public relation class can be a triangle model. This project require us to choose a RSO and do a communication audit on them, then develop strategic plans to realize its goal with $1,000 budget. Even though the syllabus is based on assumption and does not require us to implement those plans, we tried to set it as practical because we really want this RSO have more awareness on campus. However, if we directly write what we really suggest it to do on the assignment, it might become a less fancy one and imply a sense that we don’t fully understand the course material. As a result, we decided to write a different plan in the assignment, such as 5k run and social events, instead of something we really suggest them to do. This is a little bit far from real world experience because it doesn’t have profit and budget involved between the “company” and “client.”

In real world experience, triangle conflict is something must be solved rather than make up plans and statistics. I used to intern in an investment bank during summer and observed many inconsistencies between clients and company. One possible solution is “end justifies means,” which means associate will take the success of getting clients pleasant and finally earning the deal as their primary consideration. In this circumstance, they might ignore some needs of the company. For example, they might use the company’s resource and network to solve the client’s personal project in order to make an unofficial connection with the clients. This is a grey zone of company’s policies because associate sometimes inappropriately utilizes company’s resource but they can justify themselves as achieving the goal of company. I felt like it’s the implicit rules for industry with triangle structure. Both principals have some tolerance level of something that might incompatible with their goals in short run. Their concerns are whether this associate can help them achieve their goals in the end.

There are absolutely various ways to resolve the condition. If both principals can sit down and negotiate about the deal, it should be the ideal condition. But due to the limit on time and resource, associate must act independently without noticing both principals in lots of circumstance. I also had experience that when our associate ignored some request of the clients, they just turned to another investment bank, which can provide them more benefits. I think the balance of clients and company’s needs are based on the market structure. If the competition in getting the clients is really intense, the associate might ignore the company in some situation. But it really depends on the circumstance and base line in different people’s concerns.

Parallel experiences of team work

Teamwork is an important skill of interpersonal communication. It is challenging because it is not absolutely on individual level. Instead, lots of external factors, such as personality of teammates, rules and norms within a team, and roles of team members, can strongly influence teamwork performance. Also, there is no doubt that some external incentives can enhance quality of team work.

I am currently doing a group project for another class and I really enjoy it. The professor set up really clear grading policies with rewards and punishment. All group members were asked to set up a common goal together and reach a mutual agreement about how to conduct the project, such as never miss meeting unless emergency. It set up an informal rules and norms for small group and really made things done more effectively. The grading policy also provides some incentives and punishments for members' performance. For example, he suggested that all team members should vote for the most contributing and cooperative person in the final assessment. Even though every one in the team basically share the same grade, the member with highest vote will be rewarded some extra credit in his/her individual grade. On the other hand, if most of group members compliant on a certain group member's behavior or attitude, he would investigate and might lower that person's letter grade. The informal role setting in this group project also works really well. To prevent waste and noise in communication, all teams should appoint only one person to be the representative to communicate with professor and consolidate information. Even though it might cause inefficiency in some circumstance, it save our time and make the feedback process easier.

Honestly, I don't think I really have terrible teamwork experience. Even though sometimes people worked inefficiently, we could still finish the task on time. I had painful experience to figure out the communication process. In some project that requires external communication, it might be confused to figure out different people's responsibility. Usually, people have formal roles and responsibilities in a structural organization. But for external personnel who are not familiar with the process, they might choose people to contact based on proximity and intuition. My supervisor used to get really frustrated when she knew one of our external partners directly reach me via email. Then she emphasized the hierarchy of the organization that people should assign task by contacting the director first, because I am not responsible for reporting to people outside the organization. And some of the requests actually confuse me. However, after my supervisor talked to both part, this person started directly reaching to another student intern. Some of his requests haven't been negotiated and reported to people who are in charge, so we sometimes we receive requests that are contradict to each other and waste time in communication. I think this is the drawback of unclear communication flow in a team and in the organization. It might also due to different people have different viewpoints about their jobs. For this external person, his goal is obtaining his need as soon as possible so he will reach student intern because we usually reply email more timely. However, as far as we are concerned, we need to make sure the accuracy of our job. And for management level, they want to keep a structure of the organization.

“Share-The-Spoils”

The psychological experiment on 3-year old kids is interesting because it shows that whether kids want to share marbles depends on how they get them, even if the allocation of marbles is same. It reveals some rationale of the relationship between efforts and rewards in teamwork. When kids believe that both of the pay efforts to finish the goal, they are more willing to share and balance the rewards. However, when they earn something without efforts and participation of another kid, they are not willing to share. The author also mentions some application of this concept in real world, such as the different scale in taxation. He suggests that governors may want to focus on the fairness in the procedure, rather than its distribution. 

In my personal experience, I think we always evaluate whether it is beneficial or indifferent condition for us to share the spoils. Completing exam review as a group on google doc can be a good example. Even though knowledge is a public good, under such condition, students need to pay efforts and time to gain knowledge in order to gain a better grade. When doing a google doc, there is distribution on everyone's work. Some people might do more and have better understanding of the materials while other people might contribute less in the production. However, after the study guide is finished, everyone "share-the-spoils" no matter how many efforts and time you contribute. In common sense, it is a case that people who participate in the process have rights to share the production. And for people who entirely not contribute to the study guide, other people might be reluctant to share their works with them. I think the nature of whether share the spoils or not in this situation really depends on whether team member pay the minimum efforts or not. I think it is similar to the first case: the kids see the efforts of their partners, which enable them more or less better off.

Another example of "share-the-spoils" will be group projects. Most professors develop the rubrics and grade group projects based on an ideal condition, which everyone contributes at least something valuable and collaborate with team members. I remembered one of my communication class listed "don't talk to me if someone is free rider in your group project, you should try to solve it because it is a communication class" in the rubrics. In most cases, group projects allow people to contribute minimal efforts to share a grade of the whole group. Even though some courses have group member evaluation after projects done, it might change the unfairness in distribution, not the procedure. I think this is also an example of difference in distributive unfairness and procedural fairness. Even though the purpose of group projects is training collaborative skills by teamwork, it will always cause unfairness and sometimes hard to solve.

After reading the article, I also have a question on the author’s critique about taxation on rich people. Even though changing the distribution is not an effective way to prevent unfairness, I suggest that the gap in wealth will be larger in the second generation. As in the experiment, kids don’t want to share something they assign without efforts. For the second generation of very-rich, they might consider less on others’ efforts on the wealth they possess. Even if it is my personal assumptions, I still think the paradox here is interesting and I am willing to know more opinions on the taxation issue.