Personal Reputation

Personal Reputation

I would like to think I have a strong reputation in a certain student organization I am involved with. I have held several officer positions in the group and have worked to earn a name for myself as a hard-worker and a solid leader. I worked very hard to start developing this reputation. Originally I saw a position in the group that I wanted to hold because I believed I could be effective in developing the organization through it. However, I did not have much experience required and there were others who were interested as well. I began to take things into my own hands and set up and organized various group events that were very successul. This quickly developed a reputation as someone who was effective and driven. I had specific goals that I wanted to achieve, and I achieved them in a reasonable time frame.

After I had developed a solid reputation I needed to enhance it. I needed to solidify my abilities and show the group that my successes were not exceptions but the norm. I worked hard for several months in accomplishing this goal and brought several innovations to the way things were run in the group. When officer elections came around, I was a shoe-in for the position that I had desired and everyone was satisfied with the outcome of the election. Now that I had won the position I had a mandate from the group's members to carry out my promises and maintain the same or greater level of effort I had prior to the election.

Here is when an interesting motivation was introduced. I had achieved my main goal of getting elected to the position and along the way had developed a strong reputation. Now that I was in the position, I had all of the benefits of being in a leadership role, however I essentially controlled how much work I wanted to put in. There was certainly motivation for me to slack on projects or events I personally deemed unnecessary of a waste of time. Why should I waste my time on something that I do not whole-heartedly believe in or want to help with? Is what my rational side thought, however my social side knew that I could not let down the group that had voted for me.

I cannot think of an example in this situation in which I have "cashed in" on my reputation however there have certainly been opportunities in which I could have. Possibly using my reputation as hardworking and trustworthy to engage in a deal with someone and then double-back on the deal as long as there were no safeguards to prevent that. In this case, the utility from breaking the agreement would have to exceed the utility from maintaining it and the disutility from losing a good reputation.

The Triangular Principal-Agent Problem

The Triangular Principal-Agent Problem

To demonstrate a real-life analysis of the triangular principal-agent problem I will return to my experiences in working at the supermarket. My personal experience at the supermarket did not involve two principal agents, but all department managers experienced this. For this example I will use one of the departments I worked in, the deli. The deli manager maintained the deli department, had an assistant manager who was authorized to do much of the same duties as him, and oversaw a small staff of full-time and part-time deli workers. The deli manager acted as a principal to his staff, however he acted as an agent as he had to answer directly to two principals. One of these principals was the store manager who oversaw all departments in the specific store location. The other principal the deli manager had to answer to was the company deli coordinator. The company deli coordinator was an employee of the company of the corporate level and was in charge of the deli departments at each store location. This triangular relationship worked that the two principals were mostly independent of one another, neither had any power over the other, however they both had power over the deli manager.

The main function of the store manager as a principal to the deli manager was to ensure that department revenues were up to par, customer service initiatives were followed, and the department remained clean and presentable in accordance with the rest of the store. The deli coordinators position as a principal to the deli manager was to ensure he was following company-wide department initiatives, purchasing the right inventory, and keeping up the general success of the department. The store manager's primary concern is store-related issues whereas the deli coordinator's primary concern is corporate company wide issues. These concerns occasionally overlapped but each principal had separate methods and tools to resolve them. Because both principals often dealt with different aspects of the department's success, there was little tension between them however there would be occasions in which it would be problematic. For instance, if the number of catering orders into the deli was exceptionally high. The store manager would have the department manager put the more experienced and better workers on the catering orders as they tended to be expensive and difficult to make. This left less experienced and sometimes less qualified workers to man the deli counter and customers in the store. If the deli coordinator was to come to the store at this time he would see that the department was being poorly staffed and would direct the deli manager to rectify this. The deli manager, rather than see tension between his two principals would often fix this issue himself by managing the catering orders himself or some other inconvenient method that was acceptable to both principals.

If the deli manager wanted to strictly follow the desires of the store manager, he could hypothetically disregard the deli coordinator's initiatives in search of greater revenues and improved customer service. If he was only to follow the deli coordinator's demands then the department could end up dirty and unkempt as this is not the primary concern of the deli coordinator.