Fraternities tend to be fairly structured organizations, but aside from any outward presentations or special sets of rules, a fraternity is simply a large collection of people living together. My fraternity is no different, and like any group that relies on each of its members, trust plays an important role in our ability to accomplish all the tasks that help keep our organization together.
In dealing with these tasks, work is distributed among each of the members. Members need to complete house jobs, attend meetings, and maintain responsibility for any leadership positions they may have in the house. Trust between members is so important because of this reliance on one another. The person in charge of ordering food, for example, requires a huge amount of trust from each of the members. Without proper attention, there would be nothing to eat or drink, but by consolidating this task to one person, the organization can run more efficiently. With higher degrees of trust, “organizations can work more efficiently and adapt more quickly to changing circumstances” (Bos, Olson…).
Desirable behavior from a member includes the completion of each of their tasks, but because a fraternity can have so many tasks/members, it is often difficult to blame someone when a task is not completed. A reputation system would help by rewarding dependable members and making desirable/undesirable behaviors more public. This way, tasks with more responsibility could be assigned to more dependable members, and less dependable members would be encouraged to improve their behavior. The expectation that past actions would affect future interactions would encourage everyone to succeed.
The reputation system would work by rewarding/punishing members with a visible form of feedback. Members with a higher reputation could get access to certain assets, perhaps, or they could receive special clothing to act as a status symbol. Less dependable members would receive the opposite treatment. Reputation would be measured by task completion and attendance at weekly meetings, and members at the meetings would reach a consensus regarding each member’s reputation (which would also increase attendance).
While this scheme helps provide feedback, it could be manipulated by avoiding blame through inactivity or by collaborating with friends in the fraternity. Members are usually friendly with one another, by nature. In addition, no matter what the rewards would be, having a high reputation would most likely be seen as “elite,” and members would manipulate the system to achieve it.
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I think it's hard to truly evaluate a reputation among a group of friends. Like you said, it would be easy to collaborate and raise a few people's scores. Also, it would be awkward to downgrade someone you are friends with. Even if they are unbiasedly deserving of it, it would be hard to actually cast that vote. Even if it had anonymous voting like we attempted in class, the system could still very much be rigged.
ReplyDeleteVery good post, and I like your quote from Bos & Olson's article. I think this point is illustrated very well in a fraternity house. If the members don't have a very high level of trust in the leadership of the house, they would not be able to work efficiently or adapt to the rapidly changing situations at Cornell. I almost feel in a fraternity house that the officer positions are a direct reputation system. Members who are trusted are awarded positions of higher responsibility. It seems like that's the purpose of the executive board of a house. The most trusted members gain authority by being elected to these positions by the members. Indeed in some houses, this system has no doubt already broken down and members to manipulate the system to achieve their own goals.
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