Privacy and the internet

Vinnie Lauria, after a discussion about trust on the internet, recently alerted me to this recent blog on WAXY.ORG: someone posted a fake ’sex wanted’ add on Craigs list, collected and posted all the replies, in their entirety, on his website. His ruse, which extended a similar though less controversial one by Simon Owens, attracted numerous comments, largely centered around the issue of privacy; was Fortuny breaking any laws when he posted the replies and did the respondents to his advertisement have any right to expect their emails would not be published? What I found particularly striking, however was the fact that of the 62 comments posted, 94% withheld their identities using only their first names, and 61% used pseudonyms.

The internet, by allowing people to assume ‘new’ identities, tacitly encourages people to behave in ways they would otherwise be ashamed to for fear of social sanction. It is unclear to me whether this is a good thing (i.e. socially desirable) or not. On the one hand, it might allow people to ‘let of steam’ which moderates their real face to face interactions. However, as Owen and Fortuny’s experiment seems to suggest, rather than balance (an increase in activity in a virtual domain reducing the prevalence of that tendency in the real one), the internet may be altering peoples’ understanding of what is socially acceptable and what is not.

Of course this is exactly the same unresolved debate that has been going on about video games, and before that about television. As the Neil Peart (and others before him) has said “plus ca change…”.

Organizational politics

I was told recently that “…a Strategic Management professor has to show SOME sense of politics” to get anything changed in an organization. “While you don’t have to be a great politician to teach strategic management, it doesn’t make sense to say you’re a strategy professor and then say you’re too innocent to think about how your goals can be accomplished.”

I disagree. I dispute the notion that organizational politics is inevitable if you want to get something changed.

It’s not that I’m completely innocent (well perhaps I am); its just that engaging in politics, however well intentioned, has at least three consequences (other than achieving the espoused goal which is anyway far from guaranteed), all highly undesirable.

First, it creates internal distrust and hostility, neither of which is, in my view, beneficial for any organization. Second, it drives those involved towards thinking about their own interests rather than those of the organization, and towards zero sum rather than positive sum calculus. Finally, it is time consuming, taking energy and effort away from other more productive endeavors.

I took a conscious decision some time ago to try, whenever I can, to avoid acting in a ‘political’ manner (being an ‘able player’ in Burt’s terminology). I tend say what I think, and say the same thing to everyone, even though it sometimes gets me into trouble.

I am an advocate of openness, transparency and full disclosure, rather than clandestine back-room deals and exchange of hostage bargaining. I believe in truth, not versions thereof tailored for the audience of the moment. That may mean that I will hang separately, but ultimately I would rather that than spending my time guessing what others’ ulterior motives might be and plotting schemes to undermine them.

Just a personal point of view…

Time: competing for a scarce resource

We often complain (at length) about the fact that students don’t prepare properly for class. I am beginning to think that in part it’s our fault, not theirs. We simply don’t make it worth their while. Time is a scarce resource. Student’s, like good economizers, will allocate it to the activities which are most rewarding. My inference is that most of them probably have very high discount rates, which means that consequences far in the future will have little bearing on decisions that also have relatively immediate consequences. Which may explain why telling them to prepare or they will live to regret it in 10 years time when this material becomes important for their professional lives is not going to work.

However this semester I think I have found something that works for me in the short run and I believe for them in the longer run. Evidence: for my last case discussion, of 107 students enrolled in my three sections, 78 came to class and 77 of them had prepared the case. As an instructor I benefit from their preparation because 1) its much easier to have a case discussion when we are all know what we are talking about and 2) they will benefit because the discussion will make much more sense if they know the case.

All I did this semester is to adopt a rule, (which I enforce quite strictly) that anyone who has not read the case can’t be part of the discussion and should go home and do something more productive with their time. I ask each of my students individually if they have prepared. Those who admit to not being prepared, I ask to leave. Some don’t consider this a sanction (those are probably the thirty I didn’t see last class); the rest, who are keen to learn, do; so it works quite well for everyone, or seems to. All I have done is provide an incentive to those who want to learn that is much more salient than some tale of woe of the future consequences of not preparing properly. I think it’s a win-win.

Measurement error

At the COB Awards banquet last night I was sitting next to a very engaging manager from Target, the retail chain. I asked him what he wanted to see in terms of our ‘product’. He was clear that the two areas in which he would like to see improvement are soft skills (specifically he mentioned the ability to work well in project teams and ‘critical thinking’ (in my mind meaning the ability to think clearly, and articulate one’s chain of reasoning). There may be short term gains to teaching students the formula for this or that, or the piece of legislation that pertains to the other, but there must be sufficient time (and emphasis) given to the harder to quantify / measure aspects of what we do, because in the medium to long run, they are probably more important.

Customers: (who) are they really?

What do we mean when we say that our students are our ‘customers’? It this simply a metaphor or are we really talking about a contracted for service?

If we buy something we may ask the manufacturer to change the product, but does the manufacturer have an obligation to do as we say? What are our ‘rights’ as customers; what are the manufacturer’s obligations? Could we, as customers, vote with our feet and simply take our business elsewhere?On expertise:For example, suppose I were to hire a licensed contractor to build an extension to my house, and he was in the process of installing the ¾ inch plywood in the roof. If I asked him to use ¼ inch instead (as this would be considerably cheaper) should he do as I ask because I am the customer?

On sharing:

When we buy something, does is matter how much who else is footing the bill? If a friend pays 80% of your gym subscription because she thinks you should get fit, how will she feel if you go to the gym every week but eat doughnuts instead of working out? Would she be happy if you were to ask the gym owner to take out all the exercise equipment and put in armchairs instead? Should the gym owner do so if all his customers asked for armchairs? And if he did, would your friend consider her money had been well spent? Continuing in the fitness metaphor, should your personal trainer accede to your request to ‘lighten up’; that twenty reps is too hard, and perhaps you should only do should 5 instead? What about the fact that the equipment is falling apart or uncomfortable, or that there is a new type of machine that the gym might consider acquiring?

On externalities:

Many of us think hamburgers and French fries are tasty. Is it so wrong to eat nothing but burgers and fries (even when our grandmothers warned us repeatedly to eat our greens)? Does is matter that a diet of burgers could lead to most hamburger consumers dying at the age of 45? Or worse yet, being hospitalized for the last 20 years of their lives at the expense of those who ate lettuce and carrots and who are fit and healthy?

I propose no answers here — you are most welcome to respond — but simply raise some question as we think about our role as educators, as producers, custodians and disseminators of knowledge.