Big Brother

To me, it seems like diplomats and negotiators are inclined  to face a triangular principal- agent dilemma. As the eldest child, I served as an agent for my parents when it came to accomplishing tasks around the house. When I was in 6^th grade and my sister was in 3^rd grade, my parents bought me a pre-paid flip phone so they could communicate with my sister and me to help with the coordination rides to and from sporting events. Presumably, they also wanted to teach me to be responsible and allow me what a lot of my friends had, a cell phone. Both of my parents had recently earned promotions at their jobs and were home less during the day. They expected me to be able to convince my sister to chores and act as their voice, but my word did not hold the same weight as theirs. At the same time, I was still a child and the agent for my sister and me. I was rarely ever able to convince my parents that their requests were unreasonable, but from time to time I could reduce the amount of work that we had to do, which made my sister and I better off in those moments.

My sister was (is) really lazy. My dad often called about an hour before he left work, telling me a few things that he would want us to do before he got home. Usually it was preparation for whatever he wanted to cook. In the beginning, I split the work evenly because I thought that was the fairest thing to do. I was honest with my sister about everything that my father said and she waited until the last possible moment to do everything. I ended up doing a lot of her work because I knew that if she didn’t do her half, I would be held responsible.  The next few times, not only did I split the responsibilities unevenly, but also, I gave myself less jobs. Eventually, my sister caught on to me doing the less time consuming jobs, so she complained to me and threatened to tell our parents.

 Again, I had to change my strategy, because I didn’t want to do more work or have my parents find out that I was doing less. Next, I started understating to my sister how much time was left until my father got home. She still waited until what she thought was the last minute, but she could get it done without my help because she had extra time. After a while, she realized that I was giving her less time than she had, so she just started doing things later. I complained about her behavior to her, but did not report it to my parents. Sometimes when my parents weren’t home, I would go over my friends’ houses, which was against their orders. I feared that if I told on my sister, she would tell on me.

Even though I was unhappy, I was participating in an unspoken quid pro quo agreement with my sister. If I did more work, she stayed quiet. In this situation, my parents were the ultimate authority, but I found myself better off by being in cahoots with my sister. Both my sister and I were faced with moral hazard, and I think we found ourselves in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma as well. It would be simpler to report each other’s “illegal” behaviors to our parents, but we wouldn’t be able to do what we wanted as much. Also, more strict rules would have been placed upon us if we told on each other, making us both worse off. The illusion of fairness regarding chore allocation was all that my parents needed, so as we grew older, my sister and I resolved issues of shirking on our own, even after we both got cell phones.

               

Preemptive Measures

I am in a Poetry/Spoken Word RSO and the main source of conflict comes from member attendance, or lack thereof. Every semester, we have a concert, and there are limited amounts of slots for pieces. Simply put, a piece is a poem read theatrically. The name of the RSO is WORD, and we normally meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8PM-10PM at the SDRP. The organizational structure contains an executive board with ascending power levels, with a Historian, FundRaising Chair, Publicity Chair, Secretary, Vice President, President. I do not know all the responsibilities of each responsibilities; general members have a lot of power in some situations and less in others. For examples, general members have no power over the workshops or writing technique practices that we explore when we meet. The themes for our concert are usually thought of by the e-board, and they give four or five options which the general body gets to elect democratically, where everyone has equal voting power. The only time that the eboard has more voting power than general members is when voting for the next eboard, and their votes each count as two general member votes. From the stance of a general member, the structure of WORD is hierarchal, but flat.

Concerts for WORD are popular, and the crowd varies between 200 and 250 people, and they normally take place about a month before finals, and concert prep usually starts about a month before. For some people, this does not interfere with schoolwork, but when taking higher credit loads or difficult classes. Committing 4 hours a week, not including time spent writing or memorizing the piece for rehearsal and transporting to and from the meeting place, is a feat. Members of WORD do not need to perform or be in the concert, but most do by choice. Most pieces are performed in groups that require coordination, which is what the Tuesday and Thursday meetings are for. Hence, it can be difficult to make progress when there is at least one group member who is unable to make it to meetings.

Early in the semester when it’s warm, school has a new car smell; it’s fun and exciting, but after riding through the school year, you realize some of the parts of your ride break down. Instead of taking the time to study, students procrastinate and don’t perform well. This happens to seasoned students, but this especially happens to students new to college who do not know what to expect, as far as their workloads. Often in WORD, new members are ambitious and to participate, not knowing how much of a time commitment they are signing up for. This results in people being upset toward each other for not being at rehearsal at the allotted time.

WORD breeds a lot of friendships, and this makes it difficult for people to bring up something that bothers them. People don’t want to call out their friends for not being there, which can make the problem worse. Early in the preparation process this isn’t much of a problem, people can exchange team members in and out, but this is not easy because concerts prep must begin close enough to the concert so people can write their pieces, but far away enough so that people can memorize what they have. Also, if the concert is too close to finals, everyone is worse off.

This problem is not completely resolved. However, all people who participate in the concert must sign a contract saying that they cannot miss more than X number of meetings without being at risk of having their part cut out of the concert. In theory, this sounds efficient, but this does not account for excused absences, if those should even exist. Normally, when the member communicates that they have something important that they need to attend, the absence is excused. From my experience, this hasn’t been abused, but there is no explicit barrier against it. As discussed in class, it seems the best way to fix this problem is before it occurs, and the intuitive way to do so is contracting. However, there is no third-party that can effectively evaluate the situation and be fair.