Take This Job And . . .

October 20, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Both New York City tabloids had the same front page yesterday – a photo of Joe Torre and the headline SHOVE IT.
The Torre story is big news in New York. Even the Times had it on the front page, and all the TV networks pre-empted their afternoon soaps (or Judge Alex on Fox) to carry Torre’s press conference live.

Torre – does anyone not know this?– has been the manager of the Yankees for the last twelve years. In that period, the team made the playoffs every year, the ALCS seven years, the World Series six years, and won the Series four of those six times.

After the Yanks lost in the division series this year, the management, disappointed, offered Torre a one-year, $5 million contract – not as much as his current salary but higher than any other manager in baseball.

So it’s interesting that the tabloids and probably most of the fans approve of Torre’s decision to quit. They see the Yankees’ offer as an insult, one that well merits the Johnny Paycheck response. Maybe it’s because of the Boss he worked for.

George Steinbrenner, prior to the Torre era, used to fire and hire managers – usually Billy Martin – more often than most of us get an oil change. But the pace of change – different in degree, not in kind from other teams – represents a general tendency in sports. When the team does badly, change managers. But why?

Here's one idea: In an environment dominated by uncertainty, people attribute greater power to leaders. Charismatic leaders don’t arise in times of certainty but in times of crises. If things turn out well, we glorify the leader (or in cases like Rudy Giuliani, the leaders glorify themselves). Institutions that operate in a climate of uncertainty (e.g., a baseball organization) follow a similar logic. If things turn out badly, fire the manager.

But how much difference does a manager make? Managers don’t pitch down the middle, they don’t boot ground balls, they don’t pop up with men on base. More important for social scientists, how could we get any evidence that would allow us to measure that difference? I can’t think of anything. You’d have to have some way of controlling for the quality of the players on the team.

Either that or something like a duplicate bridge tournament. As football coach Bum Phillips said when asked how good a coach Don Shula was, “He can take his’n and beat your’n, and he can your’n and beat his’n.” But in the real world, no such switcheroo experiment is possible.

I did a quick search at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports (statisticians love sports, or at least those who like sports love to analyze them statistically), but I struck out swinging.


Hat tip to my brother for the JQAS lead and for reminding me of the Phillips quote.

Attributions and Contributions - Radiohead Edition

October 18, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

In class the other day, I was trying to come up with examples of personal and situational attributions, when I remembered the Radiohead ploy: offer your new album as a download and let people pay whatever they want, from nothing on up. What kind of person would take something and not pay for it?

Conveniently, economist Tyler Cowen asked people to post to his blog saying what they paid. Most people gave not just the amount but also a comment.

None of the people who paid nothing attributed their decision to their own character traits. Nobody said, “I guess I’m just a cheap bastard.” Instead, they attributed their actions to external factors. (Deviance people take note: many of these resemble “neutralizations”)

It was the band’s fault

• If they wanted to offer that option I was going to take it. If I had to pay a minimum of five pounds, or ten pounds, I would have.
• I did not pay anything for it. That was their risk.

Or there was something wrong with the music or the website

• I have not been satisfied with Radiohead's recent work and didn't think I would like this one (after two listens I think it's mediocre)
• They have an ugly website that doesn't work very well, so I bummed it from a friend.
• because they charge so much for their damn t-shirts. I feel like it evens out now.

But, as attribution theory predicts, the people who shelled out money for something they could have had free also refused to see their behavior as a sign of some internal trait like generosity. Instead, they saw it more as a strategy to achieve a goal.

• I paid 10 bucks. But in reality, part of what I was paying for was the beauty of the idea. Probably would have paid between $5 and $7 if this was already commonplace.
• £5 plus the service charge. I thought it was a fair price and a concept that needed supporting.
• 10 pounds. That's the going rate for a cd download, right? I thought it was brave of them to leave it up to the buyer

Now here’s the thing that really surprised me: none of my students had known about the download offer, and it appeared that most of them did not know of the existence of Radiohead. Small class, small sample, but still . . . .

Outside Higher Ed

October 16, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Here's what happens if your blog gets a mention in the “Around the Web” section of the Inside Higher Ed website: fifty-five people linking in. At least that's what happened with this blog yesterday. I would have thought it would be more since IHE picks only two websites each day. And the effect fades quickly. Today, there were only five referrals.

The strange thing was the post they chose to link to –“Scholarship as an Avocation” rather than the following post, “What Can I Do With an MA?”

Of course, your mileage may vary. If IHE had mentioned bloggers like Dan Myers or Jeremy Freese, people would have been clicking in by the hundreds.

The New York Walk - Homecoming Edition

October 15, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

The New York Walk planners hadn’t checked their calendar. They scheduled it for the same day as the Montclair Homecoming Game, so we had fewer students than usual on the walk. (And as we walked around Manhattan, Montclair State was defeating Kean, 27-12.)

So we were a small group of tourists, something like these.


(These bronzes are at the clock at the Hilton Hotel just across from Port Authority - public art by Tom Otterness.)

It was a beautiful autumn day, and Bryant Park behind the Library was just beginning to fill up. The Library puts out books for people to read while the sit in the park. (The red shelf has books for kids.)

I suppose there's something to be said sociologically about the trust and public spaces. Anybody could walk away with a book or two. Or a chair or table, for that matter. But I suspect that the attrition rate is low.

Bryant Park also has the cleanest pubic restrooms you can imagine. Laura Kramer, as she was leaving the women's room, complimented the custodian and asked a brief question (sorry, Laura, but I can't remember what it was), and the woman beamed and gladly answered. As Laura reminded us, though it shouldn't have been necessary, "People love to talk about their work."

Two of us were from Germany – Agnes, who was born in Poland, and Miriam – and they wanted East European food for lunch, so we stopped here.
(Agnes and Miriam are on the left of the photo. The others, though it's hard to distinguish them in this photo, include George Martin, Laura Kramer, and Peter Freund.)

And speaking of work, you may be familiar with this famous photo by George Ebbets of construction workers having lunch, sitting on a girder high above the city. (I think they were working on the Chrysler Building in the early 1930s).


A sculptor has transformed the picture into metal, and he displays his work on a truck he parks on the street in Greenwich Village.


Here are Peter, Miriam, and Agnes getting a closer look.
There was much more. Not just the usual New York sights, but quirky stuff you don't expect to find but aren't all that surprised by either, at least not in New York. Like the Dachshund rally in Washington Square.

I'm looking forward to the Spring edition of the walk. Join us.