Personal Reputation

I have been playing football (not American football, but soccer) since I was a child and thus have a good reputation when it comes to the sport. Playing for various school teams back home, I was often lauded for my good ball control and shooting skills. Through the multiple years of playing football and often times being a key player in the matches, my reputation as a football player grew considerably amongst my friends, peers and even teachers and family. I think reputation does affect behavior both in a positive and negative manner. If one lets hos or her reputation get to their head, then they might act arrogantly or deviate from the original goal and get sidetracked. But having a good reputation with the right attitude according to me keeps the person motivated to do his or her best so that they can meet and surpass the reputation already set in place for them.

After coming to college, my footballing reputation developed further as I began to play more often and even formed a team in intramurals, which performed very well. I think developing your reputation in football is easy since all one has to do is play. If they are good and influence the game in a positive manner, the reputation should grow automatically as more people become aware of your skills, want you in their team while choosing sides and can be objectively assessed by the number of goals scored, as I play a striker position. Since football is not the dominant sport on campus, fewer people play it and most play it for fun, thus the level of competition is not too high. In such a situation I found that even a player like me could gain a positive reputation.

I do not actively seek to enhance my reputation, but do strive to improve my game and play better football. This in turn should or would enhance my reputation automatically. I feel actions speak louder than words and reputation is built solely upon action and performance. Thus to build your reputation, one should focus on doing the task well, efficient, and in a timely manner.

Yes, there are quite a few occasions where having a good reputation can be bothersome and sometimes you try to avoid it. For example, during intramurals when our team is awarded a penalty, I was asked to take it. Although I did not feel confident and didn’t want to take the penalty I was pressurized into taking the penalty kick due to my “reputation” of being a very good player. I did not want the responsibility of the penalty since if it missed we would loose the game and be knocked out of the tournament. Thankfully, I did not miss that particular kick, but I was not happy with the added responsibility of taking penalty kicks. Thus having a good reputation can be harmful, as people will expect you to do more work at a consistently high level. Continuing with the football example, during my second year I was asked to join one of the top intramural teams that had won the previous year. This offer was due to my reputation, but I did not join said team and instead continued to play with my previous team. Here I tried to abandon my reputation as a good football player and instead of joining the new team that were the favorites, I “cashed” in and stayed with my old team. This was because although my reputation got me a better prospect of joining the best team, I stayed because I enjoyed playing the low-pressure game with my friends where having fun was the primary objective.

Principal Agent Problem

The principal-agent problem occurs when one party is given the right or authority to make decisions that impact the principal. Most often, the principal puts the agent is a position wherein conflict arises due to a non-alignment in objectives of the two people. With today's changing team structures and more dynamic work, the model can be better optimized to reflect a triangular structure, one where an agent deals with multiple principals. This is very much true in today's circumstances where there are more channels of control than just a single manager or principal. A simple principal-agent problem that I have witnessed and been involved with is during consulting work for the on-campus organization OTCR consulting, there is often problems is how to handle the work. As the consultants ourselves we are the agents, and have a few different principles. Firstly, the client who is paying us and expects a job to be done is our primary principal, but then is also the firm itself and the managers and partners within OTCR who are principles as well. This dual principle nature often leads to greater problems. As the principals objectives are different, they both expect different outcomes. In this situation, both principles wanted good quality from the agents, but there were still differences which led to problems. The firm wants us to act and perform the tasks as per the contract and statement of work. The client on the other hand, as the scope changed wanted different information and analysis. Thus the specific duty changed as per one of our principal's wishes. Other dissimilarities in objectives that would arise are timing vs quality of work, etc. Of course as with principal-agent problem, the main problem arises from the agent themselves, thus the agent or consultant in this case, would differ in objectives and thus maybe not work as hard or efficiently if they were the principals. Although here, the client would be the more important principal it would depend on situation to situation. I think wherever there are multiple principals, the one that is the bigger customer would be the principal and the agent should try satisfying both, but should prioritize one depending on what they seem fit. There are certainly multiple ways to solving the problem, depending on each situation. Of the best methods to solve this problem would be to bring both principles together and mutually decide on a solution that the agent should work towards. This should ensure that that the agent works in accordance with both principles. A contract or written document prior to starting said work would greatly help in establishing the guidlines and what each party should expect out of the transaction. If the agent satisfies one principal, they can certainly ignore the other or worse, perform opposite to what the second principal wanted. For example, if the Client wanted to promote advertising and brand recognition and asked OTCR to spearhead its marketing efforts. If this was an arbitrary target we had to reach without any measurable data(such as viewers or users) and OTCR wanted us to keep our budget and expenses low. As agents we could spend less in advertising material thus doing a good job according to principal managers of OTCR but would not do too well from the clients perspective of spreading the brand name.

Work Conflict in the TV show Suits

The conflict I will be writing about is regarding the tv show Suits, which revolves around the lives of a few top lawyers in new york from one if the most prestigious law firms. To detail the conflict, I will first give a few details and backstory of the main characters in the tv show and how their story line is essential for the conflict. Mike is a sharp and smart man, who has eidetic memory and is also a brilliant lawyer. However, due to some illegal activities (taking the LSATS for other people), he was expelled from college and barred from taking the LSAT himself and thus could not become a lawyer. Due to his exceptional talent and passion for becoming a lawyer,  he managed to impress Harvey Spectre, one of the top lawyers and get hired, despite the lack of credentials. The series thus follows Mike and Harvey as they work case to case, while also dealing with the growth of the company and their rising positions, while keeping his secret under wraps.

The majority of workplace conflict is inter-personal conflict arising from miscommunication, misunderstanding and inappropriate behaviors. This type of conflict is common as it would hard to eliminate such errors due to the nature of human communication itself. However, some conflict arises from when people in the firm want two different objectives and thus compete aginst one another to get their desired or more favorable outcome. The conflict I will be talking about will cover both of these issues at the same time.

The conflict is that during one case Mike and Harvey are working on, they are to prosecute an illegal lawyer who due to not having a certification had his license revoked and thus would be sent to jail and all the cases he worked on reopened if they managed to prosecute him. This one case provided a lot of conflict between the two main characters, Mike and Harvey as they had different methods of going about the case. In addition, Mike, due to his own background felt sympathy for the lawyer and was in two minds to help solve the case in the first place or not. The conflict initially arises because Mike felt that Harvey was too harsh and this one case would ruin the man's career. He was a good lawyer, who was about to retire in a few months and just because of a few certifications, he would be arrested on grounds of malpractice. Mike thought that since most of his work was good, they should just let the case slip thereby saving the man's reputation and all the cases he's worked on. This arose conflict as Harvey wanted to take the case as try to finish it like a professional without showing any empathy.

Now from an outsiders perspective, which aligns with the two perspectives of the main characters it is a morally ambiguous situation. The lawyer in question was a good one, who was on the end of his career. If they let it go like Mike wanted, then his reputation and the cases would remain as is, thus not causing too much damage. (Note, he was a good lawyer and thus the cases he solved would mostly be correct and the outcome would not change even if it were looked at again by another lawyer). Contrary to this argument is the one that Harvey has, as lawyer themselves they should take professional duty and responsibility above all else and even if he was good lawyer, he was still breaking the laws which exist to protect the people and thus should take the case and do it to best of their abilities.

The other point to be made was the emotional side of the conflict, which brings into question of Mike owns situation which in some respects is very similar if not exactly the same. Mike feels angry at Harvey for simply following the case, and questions whether he would receive the same treatment as well. This conflict festered until a breaking point as there was no middle ground to be taken, thus Harvey being the senior lawyer and morally right got his way, and the lawyer was prosecuted. The conflict ended, but with Mike feeling more vulnerable about his position, with just a few spoken assurances from Harvey that he won't let a similar situation befall Mike. I feel this conflict was inevitable given the background of the candidates and the nature of the case being so similar to what Mike is doing (fraud). I also feel the outcome of this conflict was more geared towards how it ended as Mike would just have to make peace with his wrongdoings and hope there would be a way out of his situation in the future. Another way this conflict would not arise would be if Harvey never hired Mike in the first episode of the series. For all the talk about taking morally correct decisions, Harvey should not have hired Mike knowing he lacks the certifications in order to become a legal lawyer, he was however blown aways by Mike's brilliance and made an error in judgment. Thus if Harvey never hired Mike the conflict would not arise, then again the entire show would not exist as well.