August 25th, 2010 Principal-Agent Problem
Just yesterday, I was feeling disturbed with the daily report my colleague gave me. At the end of the report he was writing a passive-aggressive way of reporting his problems. It was marked,
” Thanks Marie, you make me SPECIAL”
We had a long chat that night after we work. I can not closely monitor him as he is working remotely from his home. We shared our concerns and gave advises on how he can work and help our team in Philippines so as we can get more sales and cater our customers need, to keep the company business going. We mentioned tasks that were not done and probably showing all these tasks he did not do made him think I am telling him he is useless. I did not expect this reaction.
Seeing this situation made me feel worried and upset as I can see the other side of a person instead of looking at it as a challenge but even posting a rebellious action in a passive-aggressive way. Maybe it was a wrong way of me delivering the words to the person. Right now I thought of leaving my post in managing this person but I really need to understand instead of choosing to giving up. So I just remember I had a talk with Tim, a very special person in my life.
When tasked to a management job, I have learned this from him that:
Nobody wants to work; when they have to work and they try to work less as possible and get as much money possible. As a boss you have always to monitore (spy) them- otherwise they will not work well.
I guess this Principal-Agent Problem applies to this situation. Wikipedia defines this:
In political science and economics, the problem of motivating a party to act on behalf of another is known as ‘the principal–agent problem’. The principal–agent problem arises when a principal compensates an agent for performing certain acts that are useful to the principal and costly to the agent, and where there are elements of the performance that are costly to observe. This is the case to some extent for all contracts that are written in a world of information asymmetry, uncertaintyrisk.
Seems this is gonna be a hard task to manage. Sometimes, I remember it was still more fun still to manage noisy little kids in a kindergarten classroom than adults that behaves like hungry crocodile inside the office.
