RSOs & Transaction Costs

On campus, I am very involved in two different RSOs. The one that I generally dedicate more time to on a weekly basis is the Illinois Student Government. In ISG, I hold multiple elected leadership roles. I have been involved in the student government beginning my freshman year when I served as an executive assistant. Through my time in the organization, I have worked with multiple executive boards as well as seen the organization change, both directly and indirectly. In working with different executive boards, some of the challenges have been figuring out peoples’ leadership and communication styles. Additionally, over the past year we have transitioned into a new structure including separating branches to mimic the federal government, a popularly elected President / Vice President ticket, as well as a name change. With the separating of branches, there was a lot of work done in determining the structure of the organization. Separation of powers was a goal of the structure change, which took a lot of work on the part of the commission to ensure that our previous charge would be upheld. Additionally, due to the way we are part of the University of Illinois structure, our new constitution had to be approved by way of referendum question. While many students inside the organization were on board with the new changes, the question still needed to be approved by the student body. To me, this mimics a public firm’s process in terms of stockholder approval, which from an outsider’s point of view was very interesting to see how everything played out. Upon the approval of the new constitution, figuring out how new roles and duties would play out in action was a bit of a challenge. Additionally, with a name change came all the challenges of rebranding. The executive board and senate leadership did a good job of working through the challenges, but from an organizational point of view it was very interesting for me to observe how things were progressing.

In terms of thinking through transaction costs of relationships, my social and professional relationships are different but also very similar. In my social relationships, the transaction costs are mainly search based. I have found that most of my friends have similar backgrounds or we were in organizations together. The transaction cost in making this relationship stronger is more personal than anything as I was the one who had to decide what groups to be part of. Once that decision was made, meeting new people and building those connections was also a transaction cost. Spending time in any sense is a cost, but specifically focused on social relationships weighing the pros and cons of time spent socializing is something that I sometimes struggle with. I have come to realize that there are never enough hours in the day and that decisions must be made in terms of time management. While I believe that the transaction costs of professional relationships in terms of maintaining them is like those of social relationships, I think that the search transaction cost of those relationships is different. With professional relationships, often they come out of previous decisions made such as area of study, background or career. They are very much based on environment or nature of the relationship, for example mine with student government. Within student government, many of us also serve on the UC Senate. Through this, I have gotten to know many professors outside my area of study. This has helped me to develop a stronger and wider reaching professional network on campus that has assisted me in my shared governance roles but also personally. While there are costs with both creating and maintaining any sort of relationship, the costs have a personal and professional gain. When making decisions, I find it helpful to look at the costs versus the potential gain. In these cases, I have a strong group of supportive and understanding friends, as well as a professional network that spans farther than I would have ever imagined.