A Good Start

To kick things off here I think I need to confess to something: I'm not an economist. I just wish I were. My training is in Human Resources and my experience is in, well, a lot of things. I'm not sure when this fascination began but at some point in the last few years I started asking myself why there aren't more HR Economists. As the Human Resources field has morphed over the last thirty years into something more akin to a traditional "business" function, why hasn't it crossed paths with a social science that is all about how and why individuals and groups make decisions on how to allocate their own resources?

I wish I could claim some super original source that only the truly "hip" Economists and HR professionals have heard of but it really all started with Steven Levitt, the mastermind behind Freakonomics¹ and SuperFreakonomics². During my exploration of the "hidden side of everything" I began to realize that if patterns could be identified in the behavior of test scores, the behavior of drug dealers and in the tendencies of real estate agents, there must be some way to explain the behavior of large groups of employees as well.

I became even more convinced of this reality when I watched a Ted³ lecture (http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_pisani_sex_drugs_and_hiv_let_s_get_rational_1.html) about the rational decision making of drug addicts all around the world. Finally, the icing on the cake was the discovery that someone had translated the work of B.F. Skinner and his rats into the human world and uncovered some evidence that certain types of positive and negative reinforcement can increase certain behaviors in employee populations. His name is Aubrey Daniels⁴ and even though it may be difficult to discern his scientific methods of management from a number of other popular organizational systems, the basic principles of his research make a lot of sense to me.

So here I am. I've known for a long time that I wanted to start a research blog but I didn't know where I wanted to start. I still don't. I have no clue where I'd like this to go or what I want to discuss. I do know that the ideas in my head could easily evolve into powerful tools of organizational development but I'm just not sure I'm smart enough to go it alone. That's where the internet comes in. What better way to generate discussion and ideas that may someday allow me, or somebody else I suppose, to solidify a basic set of principles (i.e. a Business Algorithm) that will help any HR professional or business leader create an environment of success in any company in the world?

Suddenly this sounds like a much loftier goal than I had originally imagined but I suppose with any goal, no matter the size, you've got to start somewhere. I just started the journey toward mine with this post.

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Realistically I know nobody is going to read this to begin with, but if you do happen to be out there and you do happen to have any ideas on topics that may connect the worlds of HR and Economics that I can research and discuss, please comment.

¹ Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005. Print.

² Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. New York: William Morrow, 2009. Print.

³ TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Web. 26 Nov. 2011. .

⁴ Daniels, Aubrey C. Bringing out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Print.