Monday, February 16, 2009

Post a comment for me

Today there emerged another type of collective action...Prof. Sony today said that the number of new comments on the blog are increasing but the number of comments are declining and the focus should be on putting more comments.

Just as his class was over, some of us made an agreement that we will post comments for each other. This step is basically to ensure that we get good grades in the blog posting component of CAC. I do not know if we will be able to make sensible comments but still we have to fulfill our obligations. This will definitely put an impact on the grades and may be lower it ...who knows!

Now this type of collective action is not new. This strategy is frequently used by business organisations to form a cartel. There the need is a bit different. The need for forming cartel is to safeguard the business from severe competition.But by doing so, the organisations forget to innovate or develop which ultimately causes more harm than doing good.

In the last article, my friend asked if collective action is always good. My responce to this question is a big "NO".

Collective action is like the nuclear energy......we can use it for lighting our house or destroying it. The choice is ours.

6 comments:

vivek said...

Dear shankar,
You and Suhail have discussed the same topic i.e Cartel formation. The only difference was the context.
You discussed in terms of the Business and he elaborated in terms of Politics.
But I have chosen to comment on your post...Do you know why?
The first reason is that you have appealed for a comment and the second one is that you are a good friend of mine.
By writing the above reasons, I wanted to highlight that collective action can be initiated only when you have the reasons for it or you are asked for it. Moreover, you must be able to identify the person who is going to be benifitted from it.

parvati singh said...

i agree with the above. but i am doing this to check if my blog thingy is working. happy new year!

vikram bhambhu said...

Well collective action results in a win-win situation most of the times, of course exceptions are rare. But the consequencies for actors in collective action are formidable if any of them defaults. So Can I expect some comment on my blogs from you?

Gopi Sankar G said...

i guess we are slightly confused between 'collective action' and 'cooperation'. There is a definite difference between the two. Forming cartels in business could be 'Getting-ahead level of cooperation' where in the basic motive is survival in the competition. Individuals and groups may work together for their own short term gains. But is it sustainable?

Bhardwaj said...

shankarda this blogging had done us more harm than benefits. hoping this term end as early as possible. really i dnt think this blogging will help us understanding cac or social sciences as for the last 10 lectures i had never heard such words like collective action and cooperation.

Dr Priyang said...

I think one should look the motive behind the such initiative. In case you requested someone to comment on your blog then it will be benefial to both of you (May be more useful to the person you give comment to your blog). So in this case you are actually helping the other person to get the good grades.