Professional Documents
Culture Documents
• Need to understand all four factors to diagnose and change individual behavior
[Note: One colleague (Chris Perryer) coined the term “MARS BAR” to help students
remember that motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors (MARS)
are drivers of individual Behavior And Results (BAR).]
1. Motivation
• Internal forces that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of a person’s
voluntary choice of behavior
2. Ability
• Aptitudes -- natural talents that help people learn more quickly and perform
better
4. Situational factors
• Environmental conditions (e.g. time, people, budget, and work facilities) that
constrain or facilitate behavior
• “war for Talent” -- organizations acquire knowledge by hiring the best employees
• Caused by:
• Jobs have several performance dimensions, each requiring specific skills and
knowledge
LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS
1. Antecedents
• Provide cues that certain behaviors will have particular consequences -- e.g.
supervisor instructions, alarm signals
2. Behavior
3. Consequences
CONTINGENCIES OF REINFORCEMENT
1. Positive reinforcement
2. Negative reinforcement
4. Extinction
• Risks involved with using punishment and negative reinforcement, but may be
necessary to maintain equity and justice in the workplace
SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT
Reinforcement schedule may have a greater effect than the size of the reinforcer on
learning and behavior management
1. Continuous reinforcement
2. Fixed interval
3. Variable interval
- e.g. piece rate -- paid after produce a fixed number of units completed
5. Variable ratio
- e.g. making one successful sales call after an average of five calls
• Electric Boat uses behavior modification principles to minimize sick time among
salaried employees at the Groton, Rhode Island, shipyard
• Ethical concerns
- provides more complete and accurate information than from a supervisor alone
-- lower level employees feel a greater sense of fairness and open communication
• Specific
• Frequent
• Timely
• Credible
• Relevant
-- relate to individual’s behavior and goals
Seeking feedback
- problems: awkward and often inaccurate with negative feedback from social
sources
Learning by observing others, then modeling the behaviors that lead to favorable
outcomes and avoiding behaviors that lead to punishing consequences
1) Behavioral modeling
• Enhances self-efficacy
-- - belief that you have the ability, motivation, and resources to complete a task
successfully
3) Self-reinforcement
• Employee controls a reinforcer (e.g. having a break), but doesn’t “take” the
reinforcer until a self-set goal is done
• Reward experimentation
Action learning