Organization
Santosh_2102
Kinicki_Fugate_OB_1e_Ch06.pptxPart 1: Individual Behavior
© 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
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Chapter 6 | Slide 2
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT How Can You Use Goals, Feedback, Rewards, and Positive Reinforcement to Boost Effectiveness?
6.1 Performance Management Processes
6.2 Step 1: Define Performance – Expectations and Setting Goals
6.3 Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
6.4 Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and
Coaching
6.5 Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
6.6 Reinforcement and Additional Considerations for Providing Appropriate
Consequences
Performance Management Process
What is Performance Management (PM)?
A set of processes and managerial behaviors that involve defining, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and providing consequences for performance expectations
Chapter 6 | Slide 3
Performance management (PM) is a set of processes and managerial behaviors that involve defining, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, and providing consequences for performance expectations.
Defined in this way, PM is far more than the simple and common performance appraisal.
Appraisals typically refer only to the actual performance review, an event. In contrast, effective PM is a continual process that includes much more.
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Performance Management Process
Performance Management Process
Chapter 6 | Slide 4
As illustrated in Figure 6.1, PM has multiple steps or components:
Step 1: Defining performance
Step 2: Monitoring and evaluating performance
Step 3: Reviewing performance
Step 4: Providing consequences
Successfully managing performance is a powerful means for improving individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.
Effective performance management generally influences important outcomes such as greater employee engagement and better organizational performance.
Managers who practice effective performance management generate exceptional results compared to those who don’t.
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Performance Management Process
Uses of Performance Management
Make Employee-Related Decisions
Guide Employee Development
Send Strong Signals to Employees
Chapter 6 | Slide 5
Most performance management processes have three primary functions.
Make employee-related decisions . For instance, your performance can be used to justify a pay raise, a promotion, and new assignments. PM can also generate documentation and help justify termination and reduce the chances of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
Guide employee development, by assisting in identifying your strengths and weaknesses and highlighting your training and development needs. In fact, a performance management expert said that PM “is one of the most powerful talent management practices we have as HR professionals.”
Send strong signals to employees about what they are supposed to do and how to advance their careers within a given organization.
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Performance Management Process
What Goes Wrong with Performance Management
The majority of managers and organizations do a poor job of managing employee performance due to:
Chapter 6 | Slide 6
PM practices are impractical
Focusing on only one part of the process
Unfortunately, volumes of research and employee surveys show that the majority of managers and organizations do a poor job of managing employee performance.
PM practices are impractical. They don’t fit the situation and don’t motivate the appropriate behaviors and outcomes. Such PM practices therefore are reduced to “chores” that involve little more than checking boxes.
Second, many experts also argue that the pitfalls of performance management frequently are due to focusing on only one part of the process, such as rating tools themselves (filling out the annual review form is the most common example) and only using measures that are available rather than measuring what is appropriate.
These shortcomings can result in employees and managers perceiving the whole process as simply administrative and one that doesn’t accurately measure actual performance.
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Test Your OB Knowledge
Angela would like to improve the quality and effectiveness of her department’s performance evaluations. Angela should do all of the following EXCEPT:
Focus on the importance of filling out the performance management form correctly
Set clear expectations for her employees
Provide regular feedback to her employees
Find new opportunities for her employees to succeed and develop
Angela should be doing ALL of the above
Chapter 6 | Slide ‹#›
The answer is (A).
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Step 1: Define Performance – Expectations and Setting Goals
Why are Goals Important?
Chapter 6 | Slide 8
When people have goals to guide them, they are happier and achieve more
Goals provide focus
Goals enhance productivity
Goals bolster self-esteem
Goals increase commitment
It makes sense that an important way to improve your performance and your ability to manage the performance of others is to create better goals.
When people have goals to guide them, they are happier and achieve more than they would without having them.
It thus seems that an important way to improve your performance and your ability to manage the performance of others is to create better goals! It simply is a fact: when people have goals to guide them, they are happier and achieve more than they would without having them. It’s a brain thing. Achieving a goal you’ve set produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure. Reciprocally, dopamine activates neural circuitry that makes it easier to pursue new challenges.
Goals provide focus . . . enhance productivity and bolster self-esteem. And most of all, goals increase commitment, so you’re more likely to achieve whatever you set out to conquer.
Keep in mind that a challenge and prime responsibility for managers is to set and align goals across levels of OB—individual, department, and organizational.
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Step 1: Define Performance – Expectations and Setting Goals
Two Types of Goals
Performance Goal
Targets a specific end result
Learning Goal
Enhances your skill or knowledge
Chapter 6 | Slide 9
The potentially vast number of goals you might set can generally be categorized into two types—performance goals and learning goals.
A performance goal targets a specific end result, and a learning goal involves enhancing your knowledge or skill.
Managers typically overemphasize the former and ignore the latter as they try to “motivate” greater effort and achieve final results. But if you lack necessary skills, experience, or direction from your supervisor, then performance goals can be more frustrating than motivating. When skills are lacking, it often is helpful to set learning goals first and then performance goals once you’ve developed some level of proficiency.
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Step 1: Define Performance – Expectations and Setting Goals
Managing the Goal-Setting Process
Chapter 6 | Slide 10
There are four general steps to follow when implementing a goal-setting program (for yourself or others). Deficiencies in one step cannot be made up for with strength in the others. You need to diligently execute all four steps.
Step A: Set Goals. Whether goals are imposed or set participatively, via a free exchange with your manager, they should be “SMART.” SMART applied to goals is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time.
Step B: Promote Goal Commitment. Goal commitment is important because employees are more motivated to pursue goals they view as personally relevant, obtainable, and fair.
Step C: Provide Support and Feedback. This step is about helping employees achieve their goals. Practical guidelines include the following:
• Make sure each employee has the necessary skills and information to reach his or her goals. Provide training if necessary, as it can boost one’s expectancy
• Pay attention to employees’ expectations about the movement from effort to performance, their perceived self-efficacy and their reward preferences, and adjust accordingly.
• Be supportive and helpful. Empower employees as they grow.
• Give employees timely and task-specific feedback (knowledge of results) about what they are doing right and wrong.
• Provide monetary and nonmonetary incentives and reward meaningful progress too, and not just goal accomplishment.
Step D: Create Action Plans. What good is a goal without a plan for realizing it.
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Set Goals
Promote Goal Commitment
Provide Feedback and Support
Create Action Plans
Step 1: Define Performance – Expectations and Setting Goals
Using a Contingency Approach to Defining Performance
It is important to do what the situation requires, rather than a one-size fits all approach
Chapter 6 | Slide 11
It is important to do what the situation requires, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach and simply doing what has always been done, or only following your personal preferences. Fit the behavior, policy, or practice to the situation. You are well served to remember and apply this same wisdom to goal setting.
To be clear, learning and performance goals have their place, and setting SMART goals can give you a significant advantage over your competitors. However, you can be more effective still if you define performance goals in ways that match the situation —not all performance can or should be measured in dollars and cents.
Table 6.3 illustrates how some situations are best suited for behavioral goals, while others are best suited for objective goals, and others still, for task or project goals.
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Test Your OB Knowledge
When an employee's skills are lacking it is better to set performance goals first to target a specific end result and then set learning goals to allow for the skill to be acquired.
True
False
Chapter 6 | Slide ‹#›
The answer is (B).
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Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Why is Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Important?
Managers need to monitor and evaluate both progress toward the final goal and the ultimate achievement of the goal:
Otherwise it may be too late to take corrective action
Also the final evaluation may not capture all relevant aspects of performance
Chapter 6 | Slide 13
Once performance expectations (goals) are defined and communicated it is necessary to monitor and evaluate your and others’ progress and ultimate performance.
We emphasize the importance of monitoring and evaluating both progress toward the final goal and the ultimate level of goal achievement, as doing so improves final outcomes.
Managers and organizations often only monitor and evaluate final outcomes, such as did you meet your sales quota or are your customers satisfied. It may be too late to take corrective action and may not capture all of the relevant aspects of performance.
Therefore, accurately and appropriately monitoring and evaluating both progress and outcomes are critical components of effective performance management and your personal effectiveness.
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Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring Performance
Involves measuring, tracking, or otherwise verifying progress and ultimate performance
Chapter 6 | Slide 14
Monitoring performance involves measuring, tracking, or otherwise verifying progress and ultimate performance.
You use the information gathered through monitoring to identify problems (and successes) and opportunities to enhance performance during the pursuit of a goal, and your final outcomes.
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Monitoring Performance
Identify Problems and Successes
Identify Opportunities to Enhance Performance
Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring Performance
Types of measurements used to measure performance:
Timeliness
Quality
Quantity
Financial Metrics
Chapter 6 | Slide 15
To do this effectively, you need to use or even create accurate and appropriate measures. So how do you do this? Many goals can be categorized as behavioral, objective, or task-oriented. How you measure these goals should match. Besides these, your measurement of performance, and thus your monitoring, can be improved further still by also considering and using four other types of measures, some of which overlap with those shown in Table 6.3:
Timeliness. Was the work completed on time?
Quality. How well was the work done?
Quantity. How much?
Financial metrics. What were the profits, returns, or other relevant accounting-financial outcomes?
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Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Evaluating Performance
The process of comparing performance at some point in time to a previously established expectation or goal
Needs to be relevant and accurate
Chapter 6 | Slide 16
Was Performance as Expected?
It is important that your measures of performance are both relevant and accurate. There is nothing worse than being measured on something that does not matter, or that what is important isn’t measured.
Evaluating performance is the process of comparing performance at some point in time to a previously established expectation or goal.
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Performance at a Point in Time
Established Goals
Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Common Perceptual Errors
Halo
Leniency
Central Tendency
Recency Effects
Contrast Effects
Chapter 6 | Slide 17
Attributions and perceptions can greatly influence how you evaluate the information gathered via monitoring. Table 6.4 lists common perceptual errors and recommended solutions around the need to accurately monitor employee performance.
The best-laid goals from Step 1 can be completely undermined if performance toward those goals is not measured appropriately, of if performance is evaluated with bias.
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Step 2: Performance Monitoring and Evaluation
Overcoming Bias with 360-Degree Feedback
Individual compares perceptions of their own performance with
Manager
Subordinates
Peers
Customers and Suppliers
Chapter 6 | Slide 18
In 360-degree feedback individuals compare perceptions of their own performance with behaviorally specific (and usually anonymous) performance information from their manager, subordinates, and peers.
Even outsiders, such as customers or suppliers, may be involved.
Collecting performance information from multiple sources helps a person being evaluated to get a broad view of his/her performance.
The comparison of ratings across different raters also enables one to see if any potential biases and perceptual errors are occurring.
Finally, it also makes it much more difficult for managers to unfairly favor or punish particular employees.
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Test Your OB Knowledge
Janice is evaluating the employees in her department. She does not want to hurt anyone’s feelings and decides to rate all her employees high on all performance dimensions. What error is Janice making?
Halo
Contrast Effects
Central Tendency
Recency Effects
Leniency
Chapter 6 | Slide ‹#›
The answer is (E).
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Why is Feedback Important?
Feedback has the potential to boost performance
People do not receive feedback as often and as well as they would like
Feedback is dramatically underutilized
Chapter 6 | Slide 20
Most people agree that feedback—both giving and receiving—has the potential to boost performance. However, most people also admit that they neither receive nor provide feedback as often and as well as they would like.
Despite the clear and important role for feedback, it is dramatically underutilized in most every area of our lives.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
What is Feedback?
Information about individual or collective performance shared with those in a position to improve the situation
Effective feedback is only information, not an evaluation
Chapter 6 | Slide 21
Feedback is an important, but not always present, cousin of goal setting. Feedback enables you to learn how your performance compares to the goal, which you can then use to modify your behaviors and efforts.
Feedback is defined as information about (individual or collective) performance shared with those in a position to improve the situation. It thus is no surprise that managers in well-run organizations follow up goal setting with a feedback program to facilitate adjustment and improvement.
Effective feedback is only information—it is not an evaluation. Subjective assessments such as, “You’re lazy” or “You have a bad attitude,” do not qualify as effective feedback. But hard data such as units sold, days absent, dollars saved, projects completed, customers satisfied, and quality rejects are all candidates for effective feedback programs.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Functions of Feedback
Instructional
Motivational
Chapter 6 | Slide 22
Experts say feedback serves two functions for those who receive it: one is instructional and the other motivational.
Feedback instructs when it clarifies roles or teaches new behavior.
Feedback motivates when it serves as a reward or promises a reward. Hearing the boss say, “You’ve completed the project ahead of schedule, take the rest of the day off,” is a pleasant reward for hard work, but many employees also appreciate the attention and interest expressed by the very act of providing feedback, regardless of content.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Sources of Feedback
Others:
Peers
Supervisors
Lower-level employees
Outsiders
Task:
Many tasks provide a steady stream of feedback about how well or poorly one is doing
Self:
Self-serving bias may contaminate this source
Chapter 6 | Slide 23
It almost goes without saying that you receive feedback from others (e.g., peers, supervisors, lower-level employees, and outsiders).
Perhaps less obvious is the fact that the task itself is a ready source of objective feedback. For instance, many tasks—computer programming, landing a jet airplane, or driving a golf ball—provide a steady stream of feedback about how well or poorly you are doing.
A third source of feedback is you, but self-serving bias and other perceptual problems can contaminate this source. Those high in self-confidence tend to rely on personal feedback more than those with low self-confidence. And this challenge increases as one moves up the organizational hierarchy because it is more difficult to get useful feedback from others.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Role of Senior Managers and Leaders
Difficult for senior managers to get feedback
Senior managers can:
Chapter 6 | Slide 24
Seek feedback from others by creating an open and honest environment
Separate feedback from the performance review process
Create a mechanism to collect feedback anonymously
Nobody likes to give the boss negative feedback. And frankly, many bosses never ask, because they don’t want it.
This problem is compounded by the fact that task feedback is less feasible for senior managers because their day-to-day activities are more abstract than frontline employees (e.g., formulating strategy versus closing a sale). This predicament is consequential, if you don’t have a system for holding individuals accountable for their goals, all the work, time and effort that goes into developing these plans is diminished and you’ve your wasted effort. . . . Leadership tends to hold junior employees accountable but shies away from a formalized system to measure performance at the [senior manager/leader] level. . . . If [senior managers/leaders] are not willing to hold themselves accountable, employees will simply go through the motions and won’t buy into a firm-wide performance system.
So what can an executive or (high-level) manager do?
They can seek feedback from others by creating an environment in which employees feel they can be honest and open.
Separating feedback from the performance review process also helps, especially for executives who typically are not reviewed formally if at all.
Create a mechanism to collect feedback anonymously. This is useful if the source of the feedback is not particularly important.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Role of Exit Interviews
Can provide feedback that uncovers the true reasons employees quit jobs
Provides insight as to what the organization needs to improve and what it does well
Can uncover serious misconduct that needs to be addressed urgently
Chapter 6 | Slide 25
Employees quit jobs for many reasons, such as better opportunities, family issues, money, lack of fairness, bullying, and the most common—a horrible boss. Whatever the reason, exit interviews can provide the feedback that uncovers the true reasons.
The information gathered can help confirm or refute your assumptions.
It also gives you guidance on what the organization needs to improve and what it does well. Perhaps the person actually left because of unethical conduct by boss or peers. Sometimes such feedback can uncover very serious misconduct that needs to be addressed urgently.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Perception and Negative Feedback
Feedback itself is information and only becomes positive or negative when compared to a goal or expectations
Chapter 6 | Slide 26
Feedback itself is simply information, neither positive nor negative. It only becomes positive or negative when you compare it to a goal or expectation. Such comparisons are the basis for improvement.
Generally, people tend to perceive and recall positive feedback more accurately than they do negative feedback.
But negative feedback (e.g., being told your performance is below average) can have a positive motivational effect.
Nonetheless, feedback with a negative message or threatening content needs to be administered carefully to avoid creating insecurity and defensiveness. Put another way, perception matters. Both negative and positive feedback need to provide clear guidance to improve performance. Feedback is most likely to be perceived accurately, and thus more likely to be acted on, when it is seen as instrumental to an important or valued outcome.
Self-efficacy also can be damaged by negative feedback. To facilitate the development of strong efficacy beliefs, managers should be careful about the provision of negative feedback. Destructive criticism by managers which attributes the cause of poor performance to internal factors reduces both the beliefs of self-efficacy and the self-set goals of recipients. One therefore needs to be careful when delivering feedback, due to the effect of feedback on goals.
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Positive Feedback
Perceived More Accurately
Recalled More Accurately
Negative Feedback
Can have a Positive Motivational Effect
Can be Seen as a Challenge and Cause Higher Goals to be Set
Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Factors Affecting Perceptions of Feedback
Chapter 6 | Slide 27
Many factors influence how people in general, perceive feedback.
All managers and employees are susceptible to the fundamental attribution bias (e.g., your manager attributes your poor performance entirely to you and things you control) and self-serving bias (e.g., you are likely to take credit for positive performance outcomes and attribute poor performance to other, extrinsic factors).
Accuracy. A common criticism of PM systems is that they either measure the wrong things or measure the right things wrong. Either way, the feedback received is inaccurate.
Credibility of the sources. If one of the members of your project team (for school or work) points out shortcomings in your work, you are likely to put more weight on his feedback if he is an “A” student or top performer than if not. Trust also is critical here. If you don’t trust the person delivering the feedback, then you will likely be suspicious of his/her intentions and thereby discount its value.
Fairness of the system. If you perceive the process or outcomes are unfair, then you are likely not only to discount the feedback but also be outraged, withdrawal, commit counterproductive work behaviors, and/or quit. Performance appraisals are one of the most common and critical aspects of organizational life that produce issues of fairness.
Performance-reward expectancies. Effective performance management, particularly ongoing and open feedback between you and your supervisors, is an important means for managing such expectancies.
Reasonableness of the goals or standards. Think goals—challenging is good, unattainable is bad.
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Self-Serving Bias
Fundamental Attribution Bias
Accuracy
Credibility of the Sources
Fairness of the System
Performance-Reward Expectancies
Reasonableness of Goals and Standards
Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Feedback Do’s and Don’ts
Chapter 6 | Slide 28
Giving feedback to employees—and receiving feedback yourself—is one of the most misunderstood and poorly executed human resource processes.
Table 6.5 lists some important and fundamental do’s and don’ts for giving feedback.
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Step 3: Reviewing Performance and the Importance of Feedback and Coaching
Coaching – Turning Feedback into Change
Coaching is a customized process between two or more people with the intent of enhancing learning and motivating change
Chapter 6 | Slide 29
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Test Your OB Knowledge
Michael wants to make sure the feedback he provides to his employees is perceived correctly. Michael should do all of the following EXCEPT:
Be aware of the fundamental attribution error and try not to commit it
Provide feedback that is irrelevant to the person’s career
Make sure the system is perceived as fair
Make sure goals established are challenging and attainable
Deliver feedback as close as possible to when the behavior was performed
Chapter 6 | Slide ‹#›
The answer is (B).
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Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
Types of Rewards
Extrinsic rewards:
Financial, material, social
Come from the environment
Intrinsic rewards:
Psychic rewards
Are self-granted
Chapter 6 | Slide 31
Financial, material, and social rewards qualify as extrinsic rewards because they come from the environment.
Psychic rewards, however, are intrinsic rewards because they are self-granted.
If you work primarily to obtain rewards such as money or praise, you would be considered extrinsically motivated. When you derive pleasure from the task itself, feel your work is meaningful, or have a sense of responsibility, you will likely become engaged with your work. Employee engagement, a very important outcome, is fueled by intrinsic motivation.
The relative importance of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards is a matter of culture and personal preferences.
To this end, it is critically important to know what types of rewards you or others value most. This knowledge can make the difference in managing others. It can also assist you in identifying employers with whom you fit.
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Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
Distribution Criteria
General Criteria for Distributing Rewards
Results
Behavior and Actions
Nonperformance Considerations
Chapter 6 | Slide 32
Three general criteria are used for distributing rewards:
Results. Tangible outcomes such as individual, group, or organizational performance; quantity; and quality. These are commonly some type of accounting measure—sales, profit, or error rate. Increasingly these may also include customer satisfaction.
Behavior and actions. Such as teamwork, cooperation, risk taking, and creativity.
Nonperformance considerations. Customary or contractual, where the type of job, nature of the work, equity, tenure, level in hierarchy, etc., are rewarded.
Measures, rewards, and distribution criteria need to be aligned to have effective PM.
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Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
Outcomes of the Reward System
Chapter 6 | Slide 33
A good reward system should attract and motivate talented people. A good reward system also should foster personal growth and development and keep talented people from leaving.
In most instances, rewards are exchanges—you are given this for doing that.
But whatever the case, it is important that whoever provides the reward gets what is desired or intended in exchange. There are three general outcomes from rewards:
Desired outcome. More of what you intended and rewarded.
Nothing. The reward can have no effect.
Undesired side-effects. Rewards reinforce or motivate the wrong behaviors
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Desired Outcomes
More of what you intended and rewarded
Nothing
The reward can have no effect
Undesired Side-Effects
Rewards reinforce or motivate the wrong behaviors
Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
Total Rewards
Compensation
Base pay, merit pay, incentives, promotions, pay increases
Benefits
Health and wellness, paid time off, retirement
Personal Growth
Training, career development, performance management
Chapter 6 | Slide 34
Involving employees can improve the effectiveness of any reward system
Including the usual paycheck, the variety and magnitude of organizational rewards has evolved into a mind-boggling array—from child adoption and partner benefits, to college tuition reimbursement, and of course stock grants and options.
In fact, today it is common for your nonwage benefits to be 50 percent or more of your total compensation.
Total rewards encompass not only compensation and benefits, but also personal and professional growth opportunities and a motivating work environment that includes recognition, job design, and work–life balance.
A total rewards perspective therefore includes:
Compensation—base pay, merit pay, incentives, promotions, and pay increases.
Benefits—health and wellness, paid time off, and retirement.
Personal growth—training, career development, and performance management.
This broader view of rewards is due in part to stiffer competition and challenging economic conditions, which have made it difficult for cost-conscious organizations to offer higher wages and more benefits each year.
Employers have had to find alternative forms of rewards that cost less but still motivate employees to excel.
One thing that can improve the effectiveness of most any reward system is employee involvement.
Involving employees in the design, selection, and assessment of rewards programs increases the chance that the rewards provided will be perceived as fair and valuable. (Valuable rewards are valent outcomes in expectancy theory.) Involvement also fosters employee engagement as it makes them feel valued.
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Step 4: Provide Consequences – Administer Rewards and Punishment
Pay for Performance
Popular term for monetary incentives linking at least some portion of pay directly to results or accomplishments:
Above and beyond basic wages and salary
Incentive or variable pay
Merit pay, bonuses, and profit sharing
Chapter 6 | Slide 35
Pay for performance is the popular term for monetary incentives linking at least some portion of one’s pay directly to results or accomplishments.
It is compensation above and beyond basic wages and salary, and its use is consistent with recommendations derived from the expectancy theory of motivation discussed in the previous chapter.
Many people refer to it simply as incentive or variable pay.
The general idea behind pay-for-performance schemes—including but not limited to merit pay, bonuses, and profit sharing—is to give employees an incentive for working harder and/or smarter. Proponents of incentive compensation say something extra is needed, because hourly wages and fixed salaries do little more than motivate people to show up at work and put in the required hours.
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Reinforcement and Additional Considerations for Providing Appropriate Consequences
Law of Effect
Behavior with favorable consequences tends to be repeated, while behavior with unfavorable consequences tends to disappear
Chapter 6 | Slide 36
Thorndike formulated his famous law of effect, which says behavior with favorable consequences tends to be repeated, while behavior with unfavorable consequences tends to disappear.
This was a dramatic departure from previous notions that behavior was the product of inborn instincts.
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Reinforcement and Additional Considerations for Providing Appropriate Consequences
Contingent Consequences
Control behavior by responding to a target behavior
Chapter 6 | Slide 37
Contingent consequences, according to Skinner’s operant theory, control behavior by responding to a target behavior in one of four ways: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction.
The term Contingent means there is a purposeful if-then linkage between the target behavior and the consequence.
Positive reinforcement is the process of strengthening a behavior by contingently presenting something pleasing. (Importantly, a behavior is strengthened when it increases in frequency and weakened when it decreases in frequency.)
Negative reinforcement also strengthens a desired behavior by contingently withdrawing something displeasing.
Punishment is the process of weakening behavior through either the contingent presentation of something displeasing or the contingent withdrawal of something positive.
Weakening a behavior by ignoring it or making sure it is not reinforced is referred to as extinction.
The bottom line: Knowing the difference between these various forms of contingent consequences provides you with a number of powerful tools with which to manage yourself and others
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Reinforcement and Additional Considerations for Providing Appropriate Consequences
Positive Reinforcement Schedules
Chapter 6 | Slide 38
It’s not just the reinforcement that influences behavior, but also when it is administered. Continuous and intermittent reinforcement schedules are two common means for timing the administration of reinforcers.
Continuous Reinforcement. If every instance of a target behavior is reinforced then a continuous reinforcement (CRF) schedule is in effect. For instance, if you get paid every time you make a sale, then this is a CRF schedule. The sale is the desired behavior, and payment is the reinforcement. CRF is useful for making early links between desired behaviors and outcomes, but they are susceptible to perceptions of entitlement and rapid extinction if the link is broken.
Unlike CRF schedules, intermittent reinforcement involves reinforcement of some but not all instances of a target behavior.
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Continuous Reinforcement
Every instance of a target behavior is reinforced
Intermittent Reinforcement
Involves reinforcement of some but not all instances
Test Your OB Knowledge
Julia wants to use positive reinforcement and decides to pay bonuses to her employees when a new customer contract is signed. Julia is using
Fixed ratio reinforcement
Variable ratio reinforcement
Fixed interval reinforcement
Variable interval reinforcement
Just-in-time reinforcement
Chapter 6 | Slide ‹#›
The answer is (C).
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Chapter 6 | Slide 40
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Integrative Framework for Understanding and Applying OB
Part 1: Individual Behavior
© 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
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