As
a whole, I enjoyed learning about the Economics of Organizations. I thought the real world examples from the
chapters were very interesting. Reading
examples of organizations that have been around for decades/centuries, how they
have remained successful, and how their competition failed was really
intriguing. After having an internship this
summer, I’ve become a lot more interested in the different techniques and
theories behind managerial practices and how successful organizations are
run. Some of the book chapters taught me
a good deal about this that I didn’t know going in to the course.
I
also enjoyed the way the class was structured.
There was not an over heavy workload, and the balance between the Excel
Homework and Blog Posts was great.
Writing about my own experiences concerning a topic before discussing it
in class was a helpful exercise, in my opinion.
For me, preparation for blog posts and excel homeworks varied by
week. My goal would be to read the
chapter concerning that week’s blog post/excel homework a day before it was
due, and then work on the homework that day.
For excel homework, I would always watch the videos provided and take
notes. For some blog posts, there were
immediate examples that came to mind, which made writing a lot easier. Others, I would have to think and plan my
writing, and this took a little longer (but usually not more than two
hours). The same goes for excel homework. Some only took me an hour; the harder ones
took a few.
I
thought the Final Project was also a good assignment. Letting us pick an article related to any
topic from class was great, it allowed us to look through multiple articles and
choose the most interesting. Reading an
article on an interesting topic made it easier to understand and write
about. The liked the flexibility in the
length of the paper as well. I also
appreciated that there were two options to choose from in terms of what to for
the final project. Finding a scholarly
paper was a little difficult at first, but I’m glad I’ve had the experience
searching for one, as not many classes require this. As said in class, we don’t cover the topics
in the class in great detail. Using this project as a way to learn more about a
topic was interesting and a good exercise.
That
being said, it did feel like we jumped around quite a bit. I would’ve liked to learn more about some of
the topics presented in the class, but touching on them was definitely
helpful. I feel like I have a good base
of knowledge for if I’d like to learn more about some of these subjects.
Your point about depth is an interest one. I will raise it in our review discussion on Wednesday. Somethings we did cover at length, notably moral hazard. But we definitely covered a variety of topics. The other issue is that technically, the first third of the course where we did transfer pricing and the medical intern matching program, the modeling was probably more familiar, though there might have been a little bit of new stuff with the game theory. Once we started talking about risk and uncertainty, however, the technique probably was new for most of the class, so going to much greater depth might have not made a lot of sense. The bargaining model, for example, could have been expanded to consider bargaining in real time. Certainly that would have made things more realistic, but it would have come at the price of much greater technique required and I'm not sure that would have been worth it.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, on the Bolman and Deal content, which is really not technical, you can read more on your own. That should match your interest in learning about the managerial approach.