Group Settings

Working in a group setting brings to mind many conflicting attitudes. Specifically, there are those time in which I have personally strived very well in a team setting. When everything just works right, there is great communication, attitude, and a sense of accomplishment when everything is said and done. On the other hand, there have been quite a few experiences in which I have experienced a group setting utterly failed. These bad experiences are usually plagued with inefficient communication and an overall inhibited sense of morale for the team.

In one of my recent school projects, I had to meet with a partner in order to prepare a presentation for the class. This was a very pleasant experience because I was able to work with someone that was able to communicate effectively with me and have the same incentive to do well in the course. We decided to meet in the library a week before our presentation. We had both previously prepared for our meeting beforehand so we were able to utilize our research into producing a presentation. This saved us a lot of time because we committed our effort to preparing for our meeting. Furthermore, we were both motivated to do well on the project. Everything just seemed to work so smoothly because it was on a subject that we were both passionate about. I attribute this success to having matching personalities. There are just some people that you seem to click with even from the beginning.

I’ve also had experiences where things did not work so smoothly. One of these experiences that come to mind is when I had a group project in one of my classes last semester. This was a group project in which there were 3 other members including me. This experience was disastrous in the sense that nothing was accomplished. We had previously exchanged emails and were trying to arrange for a group meeting sometime before the group project. It seemed as if communication was a huge issue because it was such a hassle to effectively even agree to a meeting. Once we decided upon a time and place, 2 of the group members decided not to show up. We eventually had to complete this project the day before it was due. There was no sense of morale or team spirit in the group because 2 of the other members were gone. The attitudes that prevailed the members of the group that showed up was that the distribution of tasks in the group was unfair. This was a very stressful experience that has personally taught me how a group setting can be more detrimental than helpful. Being prepared to deal with unexpected situations such as a group member not showing up is an important characteristic of any group setting. The cliques that formed in this situation were the people that actively contributed to the project and those that did not. There was a clear distinction between people that cared about the project and the people that didn’t.

Procedural Fairness in Team and Individual Settings.

This was a very insightful piece that analyzed the wealth distribution using behavioral psychology as an example to explain a specific phenomenon. I personally believe that this article touches on important topics such as “procedural fairness” which I found to be incredibly interesting. The psychological aspect of examining how someone receives wealth affects the distribution of this wealth was in particular something that did not occur to me before. I have personally experienced this phenomenon of procedural fairness when it comes to working with in a group environment. The concept of team vs. individual production as we discussed in class can be applied in the same experiment.

One example that shows this is when working in a group environment compared to an individual environment in a school setting. When working in a group, all the members of the group must contribute their effort in order for a final grade to be determined for the entire group. For these reasons, group members will often insist that every group member contribute an equal amount of work. If someone if slacking it would not be fair for that person to get a higher grade because the other people in the group were able to contribute on his behalf. On the other hand, individual work in a school setting corresponds with the effort that the person puts into the assignment or studying for a test irrelevant of other people. The procedural setting of working in a group or studying for a test by yourself corresponds with the distribution of wealth or in this case grades.

Furthermore, this article strikes an interesting point when the author states that “The compression went into reverse in the 1980s, and since then, inequality has risen to levels approaching those of 1929.” This fact alone shows the resulting implications of our current societal approach towards wealth distribution. It is simply not working. The author proceeds to further insist that democrats focus more on more ways to achieve a more balanced wealth distribution by focusing on the procedural fairness as discussed above. Some ideas that crossed my head when reading this article was just about ways in which this can be accomplished. The people is trying to achieve this wealth distribution by offering incentives for people to take on this approach without opposition for giving out handouts.

I personally believe that one way to solve the problem of unequal wealth distribution is to promote economic equality by putting more emphasis on the work culture. If we value the workers on the edge then there would be less opposition for fairer distributions of income. The notion that managers and CEOs should make millions of dollars based off of commissions or performance should be less idealized. If there is more cooperation and involvement from both the higher ups and the workers that constitute the majority of the production and other operations, then people could see how to divide income more evenly. This type of attitude is very prevalent in Japan, in which managers do not make substantially more than the workers at a company. 

Transfer Pricing "Illinibucks"

The notion of “illinibucks” in theory sounds like an interesting concept but in actually would be difficult to implement in my opinion. Our current process utilizes a system in which we prioritize by a first come first serve basis, by seniority, or different colleges of study. I believe that our current system is fair because we place emphasis on taking the initiative such as waiting in line. The implementation of illinibucks would seem to promote greater utility but would be hard to carry out because I believe that there would be many conflicting attitudes towards this type of system. For example, one problem illinibucks would create would be to make it unfair towards people that are very active and involved. These are people that register for their classes at their earliest convenience or arrive ahead of time in order to wait in a line. These people would be at a disadvantage because they would have the same priority as someone that would normally not take the initiative to do these things.

Furthermore, illinibucks would make it incredibly difficult for upperclassmen to for major specific people to select the classes that they need to take. Under our current system, we place priority for people that need to take these classes. If everybody had illinibucks, anybody would be able to have an early selection for a class that they hypothetically would not need. The benefits to illinibucks would be create more efficiency when it comes to consumer decisions. Consumers would be smarter about dedicating their resources by using illinibucks. They would have to consider what specific things they value such as waiting for a class or waiting in line for a football ticket. Lines would invariably be smaller or more well-organized because consumers would not spend unnecessary illinibucks for things that they don’t need.

If I were given the opportunity to use illinibucks I would utilize my illinibucks primarily for important things such as school. I would make sure to allocate my illinibucks to selecting classes or meeting with my academic advisors first before I would use them for extracurricular such as buying tickets to sporting events. I could see potentially problems arising from the process of allocating illinibucks. Would students be given the same amount of illinibucks per semester? Could students buy more illinibucks if they needed them? Problems could arise because people could see some injustices from people being able to afford to buy more illinibucks. How would the school deal with students that don’t have the money to buy additional illinibucks? Would they get less priority for important things such as selecting classes? The transfer pricing of illinibucks would create many issues depending on if the administered price was either too low or too high. As mentioned before, if the administered price was too high then students that are unable to buy these illinibucks would be at a disadvantage. If prices were administered too low, then consumers could see problems arising from too many people having priority over others. These would create longer lines and consumers would see the illinibucks as being useless because people would be able to afford more of them.