Organization Reputations

The past two summers I have interned at an auto parts manufacturer, and last summer I dealt specifically with marketing and branding. The company is split into both an OE division (off the line parts for automobiles) and an aftermarket division, which is responsible for replacement parts when the originals fail (think body shop work). The company frequently does not use its corporate name on the products it distributes, and instead after acquiring various smaller parts companies over the years has left their names on the products sold. This is because there was credibility and brand recognition in the labels prior to takeover and in order to maintain both the old company’s reputation and carry over the old customers. Each auto segment has its own brand recognition with the market, with different brands representing engine parts, windshield wipers, brake pads, gaskets, or other component parts. I believe this to be a good tactic in this industry in which being from a monopolistic company is viewed in a negative light. If I’m not mistaken, it’s very similar to the model used for branding by car companies. There are different brands which are associated to different price ranges, or customer groups. There is also name variation depending on the location of the product distribution center, as in if the product is being sold in Germany, the brand name used will be a German name, same thing in other regions of Europe and in the Asian countries.

The specific manufacturing plant I worked for had a reputation for having the widest product range as well as being most well-made product within its specific market. It also has longevity on its side, as in the last year it just celebrated its 95^th anniversary, meaning that as long as car parts have been needed, the company has existed. A new fad with branding that I have observed is a consumer desire for “Made in America” products which was also something my company was well known for. The corporation as a whole is interesting because its image in corporate world is entirely different than the image it paints for itself when branding and marketing to the buyer. I believe this stems from a general dissatisfaction with corporate America and the way large companies are run, so at this point when selling a product to buyers, the smaller you seem the better. Smaller businesses don’t typically have the negative reputation of being profit hungry and ruthless that large corporations do. So in that respect, branding, and the size of the brand have a direct tie to reputation. While this was something I witnessed first-hand on the business side over the summer, it’s something that is all over the current business world. Most consumers aren’t even aware of the networks the products they buy, just because the influence of branding, and specific reputations based on brand have become so strong.

I am attaching an image from (http://www.policymic.com/articles/71255/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-this-chart-shows-how) that really opened my eyes to what the corporate segment likes to hide from consumers, and when I first saw it I was truly astonished. 

On Maintaining a Good Reputation

Personal reputation has played a very important role for me in the working world. I attribute this to the competitive nature of getting hired for and holding a job. I think personal reputations become significant any time there is a situation of competitive selection, so other examples can include college admissions and scholarship applications.

The situation I will focus on for this post concerns my summer internship. It was a working situation where I entered as a low tier employee, a position for which no one scrutinized my personal reputation. Through hard work, attention paid to my superiors, and self-directed effort, I was able to build a positive reputation for myself as well as an exterior interest in my reputation from my peers, supervisors, and superiors. One of the easiest ways to begin developing a good reputation is through outward appearance. This means dressing professionally and showing up to work each day looking like you take the job seriously. When I appeared like dressed as any other professional adult, my coworkers began to treat me as though I was one of them, rather than a young and inexperienced college student. Another component to reputation is being self-driven and independent within the workplace, because no boss wants to be the one babysitting their subordinates. In order to accomplish this, I did things for my boss without being asked, and went above and beyond with the projects I was assigned. Not only was my boss impressed with my diligence and work ethic, but her boss and other higher ups were also impressed. I ended up being recruited to work on even more important projects with them as the summer progressed. Inherent in the idea of reputation is being reputable. I not only presented myself in a way that was taken seriously, but also went above and beyond on all my assigned projects on the job.

Some things I did not do in order to maintain my reputation, was to show up on time to work every day, and moved promptly to begin tackling my assigned task or project.  I did not waste time socializing too much or take extended breaks. My boss could depend on me being hard at work each time she came by my desk. What made it even easier for me look like an above average employee was that a fellow intern, who actually sat next to me, did not build or exhibit the same seriousness in her work as I did. She was frequently wandering around, socializing with other employees, and did not accomplish nearly as much output as I did. When compared, I had built a much more substantial positive reputation than she had. Building a strong reputation is a self-rewarding system, because based on my work last summer I have been offered both a pay raise and a position to come back in partial capacity during breaks and have the option of recommendation letters should I need them from a variety of managers within the company. My fellow intern was not made any such offers. Along that line then, I view maintaining a positive reputation and more importantly self-image as essential to being a marketable job candidate and staying happy with oneself. I have never considered sacrificing my good reputation for anything, because in the long run, it does not seem to be at all worth it. Part of that analysis is also being a long term thinker, which I understand not everyone is.

Triangular Principal-Agent Problems

Since the principal-agent model contains the word principal, I’m going to assume that the example I’m thinking of will apply. The best example I can come up with is teachers who serve as agents for their boss, the principal, and their students whom they are designated to educate. I can think of other parties that teachers also serve as agents to, some of these being: parents, school board, legislators, as well as their peers. One of the hardest parts of teaching is appealing to each and every one of those principals, which can be especially difficult when they stand in disagreement as they often do. A more specific situation could be in a math class, in order to appeal to the student’s needs, a teacher may try to assign less homework or, even more realistically, test less. While this is an action students would applaud, it is not something the principal and the school administration would support, especially considering the increased emphasis on testing as a way to gauge teacher performance.

On that same topic, teacher performance and how to accurately measure it is a topic disagreed upon by most professionals in education. Sometimes the teacher students judge to be the best and most fun, is not by school and state standards performing at the level they should be. In practice, discrepancies can be resolved primarily through compromise. There is a change of command which ideally provides a sort of checks and balances system to make everyone as happy as possible. Concessions must be usually made by both parties in order to reach agreement. Another potential way to resolve the conflict could be for one party to buy out or bribe the other in order to get them to agree on one side or the other. In education, teachers can get fired for doing what they think is right or best for their students, but it is rare for them to get in trouble for listening to their principal or administration. It’s definitely an interesting topic to think about considering I’ll be in the teacher’s shoes next year. And in my case not only will I be responsible to appeasing my students and the school principal, but also listening to my parent organization, Teach for America, as well. It will be a lot of people to please, that’s for sure. 

If we thus view this sort of relationship to be a typical principal-agent model for the school system, it is clear why there is so much controversy over how to best run the school system, due to the presence of multiple principals with differing ideas on what they want done. Similar to the article we read earlier on in the semester, there a spectrum has developed on how to evaluate teacher performance, spanned on either side by Michelle Rhee and Diane Ravitch. As of yet, no solution to this multi-principle agent problem has been successful in answering the question of how to best answer the teacher evaluation question. What the camps both do agree on is that there needs to be some system in place for performance evaluation, which means there is a starting point for a compromise to be made, probably farther down the road.