Personal responsibility is doing what is meant to be done and fulfill the commitments that are already made. Personal responsibility makes an individual to be responsible for an individual’s own deeds and actions. It is a virtue and should apply to a person's thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is important to have personal responsibility because it helps you grow as a person. In learning to be more responsible, it is important to know life’s limitations. Kenneth Boulding (1972) describes in his journal article that everyone views responsibilities in their own way. That it is based on their behavior as to how one interprets what responsibilities are and what they are not. Boulding’s article states many different theories on responsibilities such as what morals they possess, what culture they have come from and what a person views as wrong and right. It does not matter how smart we are, there is only so much responsibility that a person can handle (p. 329). The relationship between personal responsibility and college success is tough when someone is new to the process. College success determines how personal responsibility plays out. There are factors, which includes determination and dedication that a person must exercise to achieve reachable goals. Applying these factors in one’s personal life will lead to a successful college education. The relationship of personal responsibility and college success closely mirrors one another. It is trying to find the balance between the two that makes it difficult at times, especially when this is the first course that I have taken online. My wife has gotten her graduate degree online and is currently working on another one. I am trying to learn from her how she balances graduate school and still able to do everything else. It will be a learning curve, but I know I will get there and know to ask for help. A preliminary plan to practice personal responsibility in education would be taking time each day to log in and see what assignments and discussions that one must participate in. I am new to the online process as I have had only classroom experience. So I am trying to find a balance between work, school, and family. I want to add as a new online student that the website is hard to navigate as I am getting confused where to find the course syllabus, and when assignments are due. I am finding help from other teammates who have done online courses before and that has helped in the learning process. I missed assignments the first week because I did not realize the time that they were due. This will be a process that I hope to catch on to more quickly than I have, but only time will tell. After reading Bertilli and Lynn (2003) article on managerial responsibility, I decided to start speaking to many construction managers in my current field. Although the article dealt with public administrators, the context can be related to the construction management field. Bertilli and Lynn (2003) state that although there may be conflict within management styles that is better to “strike a balance between competing interests, values, and interpretation of facts” (p.262). With this being said, I feel that it takes more than personal responsibility to manage a project such as implementing various operations through proper coordination and control of planning, design, estimating, contracting and construction in the entire process. It will be helpful in specifying project objectives, budgeting, scheduling, setting performance requirements, and selecting project contributors. With all these elements to think about, each one will have to be handled in a different way when dealing with different customers as everyone has different personalities. In doing so, you have to be accountable enough to know how to deal with those different personalities in order to become successful as with any job. Acknowledging that everyone has different ideas of what responsibility is and what it entails, that is when communication becomes key. Without good communication skills, you will never know what you are accountable for and what you are not. In Mostovicz, E. I., Kakabadse, A., & Kakabadse, N.K.(2011), their article aims more towards the oil fields, but the techniques they stress can be used in everyday management. They stress there are four essential pillars that must be met in order for a business to become successful which are ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust (pp. 491-494). All four of these pillars can be taken in different context, because each individual has their own opinion and standards of what each of these pillars stand for. Each person was raised within different cultures, religions, and moral standards. So it will be up to the individual to determine their moral compass of what is the right and wrong thing to do. It will be up to you to decide what those ethics are for the company you work for. Most companies have a mission statement. It represents what they represent as a company. It is very important to know a company’s values and what they focus on before taking a job with them. Because once you take on employment with that company, you are not only representing what they stand for, but reflect your values as well. In conclusion, there are many factors that take place when someone speaks about personal responsibility. By taking this class, it has opened my eyes to what matters to me, what type of manager I would like to become, and which companies I will be applying with once I graduate. The testing that we did throughout the class taught me what I need to work on, what I am good at, and what employment opportunities will be good for me. Also through the discussions with classmates, I see how everyone sees or interprets something different, that everyone has their own thoughts and ideas, and that everyone goes by their own moral compass. After researching personal responsibility, it has opened my eyes to other views of what personal responsibility means to me. It was a lesson well learned. References
Bertelli, A. M., & Lynn,Laurence E.,,Jr. (2003). Managerial responsibility. Public Administration Review, 63(3), 259-268. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/197169957?accountid=458
Boulding, K. E. (1972). The future of personal responsibility. The American Behavioral Scientist (Pre-1986), 15(3), 329. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/194678736?accountid=458
Mostovicz, E. I., Kakabadse, A., & Kakabadse, N.K. (2011). The four pillars of corporate responsibility: ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust. Corporate Governance, 11(4), 489-500.