The Power of Reputation

I believe personal reputation is really important, especially in a group setting. In my own committee, I have good reputation because I am really committed, and everyone can see that I am putting a lot of efforts into the group. From the word affirmation from group members, I am really relieved and feel rewarded, and somehow it motivates me more to make further contribution to the committee. From other group members’ standing points, they trust me because of my good reputation, that they are willing to share ideas and opinions with me. I get immediate feedback from group members, and I make them feel ownership that they are more comfortable sharing things with me.

Reputation is earned and it builds over time. Especially for a brand new committee, it takes time to build trust and reputation among group members. What I did all the time is that I tried to maintain great communication with team leaders, and make sure there is direct and indirect communication between leaders and their group members. I talked with executive boards in a regular basis, to make sure they gain something from the leadership role too. At the same time, I also spend some time with regular group members, and make sure their voice and opinions are heard, and even I don’t invent their idea, I will explain in the meeting why it is not applicable, and what case we can implement their plans. At first, it is hard to do it, because it takes a lot of time. But thinking back, I think it is definitely worthy of spending time in communication, and keep track of what is going on in the group. I believe my reputation maintains good because my consistent effort into this type of communication, and the message behind this is that our committee is really open-minded and it is really giving group members to contribute more with more ownership.

To enhance this good reputation among my committee, I also take time to have conversation with them about their own development in career and share my resources with them to help them to move to the next stage. I try to combine their interests with our committee’s mission or task, as well as suggesting them to do something for their own sake. I do it not just for enhancing the relationship with them and reputation for myself, but also just simply enjoy helping other people.

Occasionally, when there is pressure on events or task, I stayed away from it a little bit. There was a time, I pushed an executive board member too hard that she was a little bit overwhelmed, and felt hurt by the way I spoke with her. I took “cash in” because I was more focused on the goal and tight deadline, instead of giving her ownership to do things in her way, and providing her freedom and responsibility to take care of it. Because if she could do the way I wanted her to do, it saved me time and effort of following up and worrying about it. But from her perspective, I behaved like I didn’t trust her at all, and I doubted her ability of doing it, which is not good. In that situation, it was definitely not worthy “cash in” to gain benefit from it. Luckily, because of all the efforts I built over time, she was able to tell me the truth and how she really felt so I tried to avoid doing it again. When it is too stressful, I get a little bit crazy sometimes that I didn’t pay that much attention on people, where might lose my reputation. I learned from that lesson, and tried to be more careful of some details, which can easily erase my good reputation. Good reputation takes time to build, while bad reputation crushes easily.

I would like to share another story in one of my project this semester. We are working on a case that the company is concerned moral situation in workers. There are six people in the same line, doing the same job. Five out of six don’t do the job, and behave like slackly. The only one who is really taking effort in the work got screwed up because he reported five of the other coworkers of their slack work. The manager switched him to another line, but people don’t like him because they all know story about the fact that he will report coworkers to manager. From that employee, he didn’t do anything wrong, that he is considering for company’s efficiency and work force. However, because his reputation is ruined for something he did, which is good, he is isolated among the group. It is sad that the manager didn’t take good care of him, and put him into a position of targeted. A lot of cases like that happened in the company, and there is high possibility that the person will leave the company. My point here is that good behavior might lead to bad reputation too, and you may be screwed up because of good behavior. From the management side, you have to be very careful about it, to protect people’s privacy and make sure they didn’t fall into bad reputation for doing good things.

Standard Principal-Agent Model in Real World

When I was an intern in Radisson Plaza Hotel as a front desk trainee, I got a chance to work with Concierge Department. The main duty of Concierge Department is to make sure the customers in the hotel have a great time during their stay. All the people work in the department are very familiar with customer services in the city and tourist destinations. During the day and night, one of the most popular services is getting taxi for customers. One day when I was working with Concierge Department, I asked the manager of the department Tom that what strategies the department usually use to get taxi more efficiently, especially in traffic rush hours. Tom explained to me that there is a popular app on the market that called “Find a Taxi Driver.” Basically, the app helps hotels and other tourist destination services to find taxi drivers 24 hours a day and match by the preference of location. It is like a “Yelp,” but in the purpose of finding taxi drivers. I asked Tom that how reliable the department could trust an app like that. He said, the process is that Tom just to hit the button of “request” in the app with his phone, and if the taxi driver is able to come here for the service, then the driver will call back to the phone number that put request. There are a lot of taxi drivers who worked for a particular taxi company, but each service they get match with a customer through the company has to pay back to the company. In another word, the benefits of the service will be deducted if they get customers through the company. However, the taxi company provides drivers’ maintenance to the car, licenses and their salaries, so drivers are trapped with the company. Meanwhile, these taxi drivers want to make some extra money without giving back to their company, and that is why they enjoy using the app, since there is no contract restrictions through the app, and they can get services whenever the market needs them. All those reasons prove that why the app is reliable for people who work for the Concierge Department in Hotels. Plus, there is more than one app in the market, which serves the same group of people.

In this case, taxi drivers are equal to the agent in the standard principal-agent model. The customers/clients of taxi drivers are supposed to come from either company customer request, or through some drop-in services on the street. In fact, for the purpose of taxi drivers’ personal benefit, they minimize the clients of these two categories, but they try to maximize their personal benefits through taking more customers from the free market (such as through the app).

The firm in this model is of course the company of those taxi drivers. The firm would like to get more clients through providing more efficient services to customers, and through the money they gain from each service of each driver. There are a lot of costs included here. The company has to pay for the maintenance of each car, the insurance of both cars and taxi drivers; however, the firm is going to spend more it is supposed to be, because the time those taxi drivers devote into the company is much less than what their time of shift, so the company should not pay for the costs which enables taxi drivers to get more personal benefits.

On the other hand, the firm is not able to expand their service because even they use better strategies to expand on their business, the customers can’t be matched very efficiently with taxi drivers, since so many of them are focused on their own business. The firm will lose some old customers if the situation is worse.

From the perspective of the firm, taxi drivers act as taking advantage of opportunism and they serve clients instead of serve the firm itself, which is the taxi company. From the perspective of Concierge Department in hotel, they are serving both clients, which is customers in hotel, and their firm, which is the hotel. It is surprising to find out later that the reason the hotel will rely on using apps to serve for customers have another reason. Each hotel hires some drivers and maintains partnership with some contractor. The drivers hired by the hotel can serve both clients, which is customers of the hotel, and the firm, which is anyone in the hotel. Most of the drivers are more willing to serve more to the firm, instead of customers, because they will have personal benefits, such as financial benefits, like tips, and non-financial benefits, such as potential opportunities of promotion. Those drivers who have contracts with the company satisfy the triangle situation too.