C H A P T E R
T W O
Individual Behavior
and Learning
Individual Behavior and Learning
• Four factors that affect individual behavior
in organizations:
• Drive Behavior
– Motivation
– Ability
• Provide opportunities and constraints
– Role perceptions
– Situational Contingencies
Model of Individual Behavior
Role
Perceptions
Motivation
Individual
Behavior and
Performance
Ability
Situational
Contingencies
Employee Motivation
• Forces within a person that drive his or her
direction, intensity, and persistence of
voluntary behavior
• Direction - goal oriented
• Intensity - amount of effort
• Persistence - continuing effort
Ability
• Natural Aptitudes
– based on talents, size, capabilities
– cannot be learned, or acquired
• Learned Capabilities
– can be taught and learned
– physical and mental skills
• Competency vs Person Job Fit
– Generic competencies not specific task abilities
Assessing Competencies at EMC
When EMC was about to
dramatically expand its work
force, an executive team at the
enterprise storage products
firm developed an “Employee
Success Profile.” This list of
generic competencies
represented the traits of
successful employees, such as
goal-orientation and integrity.
Courtesy of EMC Corp.
Roles
• Role Perceptions - beliefs about what
behaviors are appropriate or necessary in a
particular situation, including job tasks,
relative importance, and preferred behaviors
to accomplish those tasks
• Role Problems
– Role Overload
– Role Conflict
– Role Ambiguity
Situational Contingencies
• Environmental Factors outside of employee
control that constrain or facilitate their
behavior and/or performance
– time, people, resources, working conditions,
customers
Types of Work-Related Behaviors
•
•
•
•
Joining the organization
Remaining with the organization
Maintaining work attendance
Performing required job duties
– In-role performance
• Organizational citizenship behavior
– Extra-role performance
Joining Organizations
• Applying, Interviewing, Hiring,
Socialization into the organization
• Often driven by external factors:
– money, prestige of organization, etc.
• Has changed with technology
Socialization into the
organization
• Learning the history of the organization
• Examining and understanding the structure
of the organization
• Learning the culture and atmosphere
Remaining with the Organization
• Difficult to keep employees with low
unemployment rates
• Job Satisfaction
– Satisfaction does not motivate but...
– Job Dissatisfaction cause someone to leave
• Things like money become less motivating
and become areas of possible dissatisfaction
Remaining cont...
• Organizational Commitment - the drive to
remain with an organization
• Three aspects
– Affective - liking your organization
– Normative - feeling an obligation toward an
organization
– Continuance - remaining with an organization
for lack of another option
In-Role Performance
• Task performance - goal-directed activities
that are under the individual’s control
• Physical and mental behaviors
• Most can be measured and controlled
• This is what we get paid for
Extra-Role Behavior
• Deviant Behavior - behaviors detrimental to
the organization, the individual, and others
– Examples: ??
• Organizational Citizenship - behavior above
and beyond in-role requirements that in the
aggregate promote individual,
organizational, and stakeholder performance
• Influenced by many factors including:
– individual beliefs, fairness perceptions, group
characteristics, management behaviors
Definition of Learning
• A relatively permanent change in behavior (or
behavioral tendency) that occurs as a result of a
person’s interaction with the environment.
Behavior Modification
• We “operate” on the environment
– alter behavior to maximize positive and
minimize adverse consequences.
• Operant versus respondent behaviors
• Law of effect
– likelihood that an operant behavior will be
repeated depends on its consequences
A-B-Cs of OB Modification
Antecedents
Behavior
Consequences
What happens
before behavior
What person
says or does
What happens
After behavior
Employee
attends
scheduled
work
Employee
receives
attendance
bonus
Example
Attendance
bonus system
is announced
Contingencies of Reinforcement
Consequence
is Introduced
Behavior
Increases/
Maintained
Positive
reinforcement
Behavior
Decreases
Punishment
No
Consequence
Consequence
is Removed
Negative
reinforcement
Extinction
Punishment
Schedules of Reinforcement
• Continuous reinforcement- after every
behavior
• good for starting behaviors
• drastic fall of after some time
• Fixed
– Fixed interval- after set amount of time
– Fixed ratio- based on a set # of behaviors
• Variable
– Variable interval- average time, but no pattern
– Variable ratio- average number of behaviors, no
pattern
OB Modification Limitations
• Can’t reinforce non-observable behavior
• Reinforcer tends to satiate
• Variable ratio schedule is a form of
gambling
• Ethical concerns about perceived
manipulation
Learning through Feedback
• Any information about consequences
of our behavior
• Clarifies role perceptions
• Corrective feedback improves ability
• Positive feedback motivates future
behavior
Multi-Source (360 Degree)
Feedback
Supervisor
Customer
Co-worker
Evaluated
Employee
Subordinate
Project
leader
Co-worker
Subordinate
Subordinate
Giving Feedback Effectively
Specific
Relevant
Credible
Effective
Feedback
Frequent
Timely
Social Learning Theory
(Bandura, 1990)
• Cognitive and environmental process combine to
facilitate learning
• Behavioral modeling, Vicarious Learning
– Observing and modeling behavior of others
• Learning behavior consequences
– Observing consequences that others experience
• Self-reinforcement
– Reinforcing our own behavior with consequences
within our control
• Rewards signal information about self
Learning Through Experience
• Benefits of experiential learning
– Helps acquire tacit knowledge/skills
– Allows implicit learning
• Practicing experiential learning
– Reward experimentation
– Recognize mistakes as part of learning
– Action learning -- investigating a real problem
• Success experience increase self-efficacy