Blog 3: Transaction Costs

Last spring semester I joined the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) RSO because I was looking to make new friends on campus. I attended their first general meeting in late January and everyone I spoke with was very friendly. VSA was looking for interns who basically assisted the executive board in organizing and carrying out events. I submitted an application to be a VSA intern but at the time I did not know what the position involved. 

I was interviewed by one member of the executive board and one of the current VSA interns for the position. We originally used Facebook for communication and only had three group chats: one for the executive board, one for the interns, and one for everyone in the RSO. There were weekly meetings held on Sundays where the first half is attended by the interns then the second half is attended by the executive board and interns. 

From mid/late January to late February everyone in the RSO was focused on Vietnamese Cultural Night (VCN). Communication within the group chats and during the weekly meetings were clear and concise on what everyone needed to do. For me, I was the tail in the lion dance which meant lifting up and helping my partner, the head, go as high as possible during jumps. At the beginning of February the executive board decided to shift communication platform from Facebook Messenger groups to Slack, a teamwork focused messaging app which allows for creation of channels to organize work and communicate as a team easier. 

Everyone was told to download and start using Slack for RSO communication from general members to the executive board. After this transition, communication was much more convoluted because now there were six times (6x) as many group discussions to keep track of instead of just three groups so eighteen groups by the time I decided to leave the RSO. A new group was created for every event that was underway but at the same time many of the groups overlapped with the same members and redundant responsibilities. As one of the VSA interns, whose responsibilities include assisting in all VSA events, I was added to every single new group that was created which meant I received a message notification whenever anyone in any of the eighteen groups sent a message. 

I voiced my issues with using Slack during the weekly group meetings and everyone in attendance agreed that there were too many groups to keep track of but nothing was ever done. Members on the executive board and intern group were having difficulty prioritizing which messages were important and needed responses over the ones that did not. When deciding to switch to Slack, an app specifically designed to streamline and organize team communication, over Facebook Messenger groups, I can see the appeal of Slack however in practice the organization aspect is not practical and I would argue detrimental to team communication. 

Transitioning to Slack from Facebook Messenger had high transaction costs. Instead of just three groups on Facebook Messenger there were now eighteen different groups on Slack. The benefit of organizing different discussions into groups on Slack were outweighed by the redundancy and overlap in terms of members and topic or focus of the groups. For example, executive board and intern members were in a group just for the weekly meetings, one group for the executive board, another for the interns, another group for both interns and executive members but this group was for general matters. The high number of groups that were created made members of the organization feel that many of the messages were irrelevant to them resulting in members not checking Slack and missing important messages or submitting responses when they were requested. This defeats the purpose of switching to Slack in the first place. If we did not switch to Slack we would not have had as many communications issues which hindered event organization, execution, and decrease in member participation.