I am a student in Professor Arvan's Econ 490 class, writing under an alias to protect my privacy, using the name of a professional economist as part of the alias.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Team Production With Gift Exchange

In the New York Times article, a scenario created by two developmental psychologists Michael Tomasello and Katharina Hamann was explained. This scenario was meant to study and explain a child’s reaction this “share-the-spoils” idea based on certain situations and connecting that to the adults. The “share-the spoils” concept is, to my understanding, the description of when a person, more specifically a child in the study, is willing to share their success or rewards with another person/child. In the study, there were slight variations to each scenario to help try and identify when people are more willing to “share-the-spoils” and what the root of this willingness is.

When the three different situations played out, Tomasello and Hamann had interesting findings. They found that during their study, the children were less willing to share their earnings and create equality when they were either randomly given the better earnings, same idea as “finder’s keepers,” which wasn’t much of a surprise to me. Something more interesting, though, is that even when the two children performed the same exact task separately which resulted in unequal results, the “rich” child was still less willing to share.

The third scenario, which was actually the first one played out in the study and what the other situations were varied around, was when the children had to work together to get the earnings. When this scenario occurred, it was much more likely for the “rich” child to share their earnings with the other child because it was essential for them to work together to be able to get the earnings. I think that this scenario in particular relates the most to the idea of positive team production and gift exchange, while I do think that the other scenarios are definite possibilities during team production in cases such as group projects or in your career.

At the company that I will be working for next year, employees, excluding the sales representatives, are paid based on a salary and are eligible for a bonus at the end of the year based on certain criteria. This criteria is determined at the beginning of the year in a meeting with the president of your division or an executive of the company with very specific tasks and numbers that need to be met to ensure your full bonus. While I didn’t have direct experience with one of these meetings as an intern and have yet to have this meeting since I am still a student, a co-worker of mine was willing to explain the process to me during my last day of the internship when I had just received my offer to come back next year.

The criteria for this bonus wasn’t based off of how the company did as a whole, which would work in your favor if you did well but the company didn’t but wouldn’t work in favor of those who were hoping they could be lazy if the company was constantly growing without them. I feel like in many instances with companies, commissions or bonuses are based off of solely personal successes that would help the company and don’t focus much on the collaboration that is stressed so greatly at this university, as well as many others I’m sure. Something that I like about my company, however, is that a person’s individual bonus will be dependent on their respective team.

To be clearer, my company is a pharmaceutical product distributor and the company is broken up into product divisions which many employees view as their own mini company. In these terms, a percentage of one’s bonus will be dependent upon the success and growth of their product; something that I think promotes inclusion. Clearly there are tasks that are very specific to each person to make sure that they are doing their part, but there are also portions of the bonus that cannot be achieved alone, which makes your goals the goals of your co-workers at this company. Knowing this aspect of the company in retrospect started tying things together for me. I had always noticed that within my product division that everyone was very inclusive and willing to help on another, and while I think that one of the reasons was because they sincerely liked each other, knowing that their overall bonus was dependent on each other’s success made sense as well.

Other company’s have a different culture than this, the simplest one I can think of would be that of a car dealership. Your co-worker would be less willing to invest their time into help you with your work since you will be gaining commission off the sale and your co-worker won’t. I think that situations such as these could relate to the other scenarios of the study where the child was less willing to share their earnings because of the dumb luck they got it or simply because inequality was apparent.

4 comments:

  1. Let's look at one specific thing you said - that a then current employee explained the bonus program to you as an intern. I don't know that this is exactly sharing the marbles, but giving out information when you have it and somebody else is not informed, has some aspect of sharing.

    Now I'd like you to apply the criteria in the New York Times piece. Did your co-worker share the information because of your contribution at work? Or was it simply the friendly thing to do?

    One of the things I've written on a couple of other students posts is about people who seem to be under performers. Do you help them or do you turn a cold shoulder on them? And might you based this decision on whether you think they can improve or not?

    I can envision in the intern case that employees might feel threatened by an intern if their own job was on the line (and they might get replaced by the intern). But they'd be in quite a different situation if they were pretty secure in their own employment. The intern might still not be very productive relative to a full time worker, because the intern is pretty green. But the intern might show some potential. How would sharing the marbles work then?

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  2. I believe that my co-worker shared that information with me once he learned that I was asked to come on as a full time employee once I graduated. He was explaining the system with me and how you can negotiate your bonus in the future if you aren't able to negotiate your salary to what you want it to be. He did this only once I received an offer, but I still think that it was something friendly to do and gave me a good insight into the company.

    I think that in circumstances where someone is underperforming, if it affects you and your work you should always try and help. I think that their true performance will show and that if you are picking up extra work and still maintaining your own, that will also speak volumes about yourself and your work ethic. I think that people always deserve a chance to prove themselves so you shouldn't immediately turn a cold shoulder in case they can improve, but that these under performances could be brought up in meetings with managers if you are truly concerned.

    For the company that I was working for specifically, it was a very growing company and a lot of spots open for interns and other employees. My division especially was a very competitive and fast paced one which prided themselves on their work ethic and knew that they would all grow in the company, so I don't think that anyone was threatened by what I could do to their position, I was mostly there just to help out. I think that if interns were with a company with employees that felt threatened, they might've not been as open with me about insights into the company or helping me learn about the industry to make sure that they had a leg up on me, making sharing the marbles pretty inexistent.

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  3. In regards to the article talking about sharing the marbles, the author mentioned that when there is equal collaboration the tendency to share was 75%, and the sharing was an equal split. If you look at what you do for your company do you think they are giving you a good portion of the marbles? The fact that they give you a yearly bonus, as well as your salary is pretty awesome, I would assume they give you a pretty good portion of the marbles that you deserve.

    At Enterprise, the salary for the starting position was quite low, and their is no commission structure for sales other then a small chance at a monthly award. Through the computer system we could see the revenue that each employee generated, and each month it would be a significant amount. Needles to say, as a sales position receiving a small salary and basically no commission, I did not see them sharing the marbles quite evenly.

    In my perspective, there probably isn't one company that is not selfish, in order to be a successful company the owners/upper management has to be making tons of money, enough money to pursue new innovative ideas and grow the company further. The last article mentioned that we should try making companies not selfish anymore, I don't think this would be the best idea. Without selfish owners/upper management then no one would be making enough money to push innovation in the company and eventually the company would be pushed out by a better competitor run by selfish individuals.

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  4. I have had something very similar happen with the internship that I had over the past summer. Nobody told me that the company offered bonuses and on what criteria they did and that was probably because they wanted to see that I was still motivated by the company itself and not so much by the bonus incentives. A co-worker that worked with me over the summer said that because of productive work that I've done and because I was someone that everyone enjoyed working with that once I get the job I would be eligible to all of the bonuses that the company offers. So in this example I saw that the company was incentivized to share the marbles more often than any other job that I've had in the past.

    I disagree with Grant's opinion to a degree and the opinion of the last article in regard to making the companies less selfish because I believe that this is what makes a workplace competitive. Being the higher-up in the company is a difficult job and it comes with a lot of risk because you choose which route the company takes and if you make a mistake in that regard you are punished by not being able to find other jobs in case you get fired or the company goes bankrupt. So I believe that this selfish is a good thing for holding people accountable but I agree that in certain situations this selfishness is too much and it has a backlash on the rest of us that don't hold a high position in the company.

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