Elinor Ostrom

One team I had the pleasure of being a part of was my high school soccer team. We were the Eagles - a single team split between junior varsity (JV) and varsity. The structure of a soccer team more closely resembles the football team analogy given by Bolman and Deal. In soccer, players perform in close proximity to one another with each play being a concerted group effort. I started on the JV team my freshman year. The JV team was significantly larger than the varsity team which made it much more difficult to manage. This loose structure, however,  allowed everyone who wanted a shot at playing soccer a fair enough chance. Hardly any cuts were made on the JV team and everyone got playing time - even if they weren’t “ready” (I remember one game I stupidly showed up for the last half to observe after a track meet - I was thrown in anyway.). JV was not based on skill, but determination. Varsity, however, relied on prowess. Skilled JV players could play on both tea...

Whereas many people were taught that it’s a “dog eat dog world”, I learned to “take one for the team”. Throughout my life, I’ve always had to be a team player. I grew up one of four children. For a bunch of kids who shared a room for 7 years, we hardly bickered. One thing was for certain: we had each other’s back. I had always been part of a team. I ran track, played soccer, was in drama club, and debated on the high school debate team. There were many times that I put what I believed was best for the team before my selfish concerns. Unfortunately, selflessness sometimes blurs rationality and can make decisions much harder for me. I was taught to consider the actors involved in my own decisions and how my choices affect other people. On the contrary, opportunism does not consider other actors. When a person acts opportunistically, they willfully exploit others for gain.  I could have acted opportunistically by seizing a position held by a ...

All throughout college, I have worked at the campus drugstore Walgreens. The structure of Walgreens is hierarchical consisting of a general store manager, an assistant store manager (ASM), an assistant store manager trainee (ASMT), shift lead managers, and the beauty consultant (BC) and customer service associates (CSA. However, in various ways this structure is ignored to meet unique store needs. I began as a part-time customer service associate (CSA) towards the end of my freshman year. At the beginning of my junior year, I accepted a promotion to a higher paying full-time position as a beauty consultant. My responsibilities expanded greatly including dated expectations from adjustment to my position as CSA. Over the summers that I was a CSA, I found addition hours at other stores in the district to guarantee a full 40 hours. Many stores’ organizational structure differed greatly from Green street. Typically, SMs would handle much of the office work and ASMs were in charge of m...

Elinor Ostrom was a Nobel Prize winning political scientist and economist. She was  also a professor and a lead researcher for the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural  Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANFREM CRISP).  Ostrom was born during the Great Depression on August 7, 1933 in Los Angeles,  California. She was raised as a “poor kid” to divorced artisans in conjunction with the  wealthy kids in Beverly Hills, her surrounding neighborhood. A hobby she adopted as a  child was swimming. This hobby grew into a passion, and Ostrom began to swim  competitively on teams and later became a swim teacher. Money from teaching funded  her schooling at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she received  her B.A. in political science in 1954. A woman pursuing work within economics was controversial during the 1950s. Ostrom  faced gender discrimination at UCLA, a...