Operant Conditioning

Operant Conditioning:

Operant conditioning is a method for modifying behaviour through consequences for responding and that consequence teaches us to either repeat the desired behaviour or reduce the occurrence of undesired behaviour (B.F.Skinner, 1937). Skinner believed that, "the best way to understand behaviour is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences".

The two categories of consequences are reinforcement and punishment and these can each be divided into positive and negative type. Reinforcement is focused on increasing the possibility of a behaviour occurring while punishment focus is on reducing behaviour.

Strength and Weaknesses of Operant Conditioning at workplaces:

According to Skinner's terminology any form of incentives such as goals and rewards may be referred to as positive reinforce and the receiving of the reward or achieving the goal is termed as positive reinforcement. (Skinner B.F., 1969). Many organisations use positive reinforcement to increase productivity, motivate workers, decrease absenteeism and workplace accidents.

Positive reinforcement includes verbal or written praising, rewards, commission, bonuses, raises, promotions. Routine use of this management style helps establish a positive work environment and performance. It is one of the powerful techniques for the motivation of the actions of other people. (Walker S.,1975). One company tried holding lottery draws every month and they noticed a significant consistency in attendance. A construction company offered incentives such as buffet end of each month if workers maintained an accident free record (Mazur J.E., 1986). Here buffet act as positive reinforce to motivate the workers to work safely. Overuse of positive reinforcement can cause employees to underperform in some instances. For example, a manager who gives a high reward to sales employee for completing $10,000 quota in a given month may create a belief by employee that this is his highest level of expectation. Also, other employees may become envious of him. (Kokemuller Neil, n.d.)

A negative reinforce is a stimulus one would desire to avoid. The act of escaping or avoiding a negative reinforce is termed as negative reinforcement. Cutting hours of a part-time employee, demotions and termination are all examples of negative consequences used to improve good performance. Negative reinforcement is increasing of a desired behaviour by the consequence of experiencing a negative condition. For example, some companies often require employees to work on Saturdays. Employees typically prefer not to work on Saturdays. In this case, manager can offer to end Saturday work days, if employees finish their work during the weekdays. (Koknuller N., n.d.). Here Saturday work is a negative stimulus one would like to avoid. Overuse of negative reinforcement can cause anxiety; fear leading to a low morale in employees. While this may help to improve productivity in short term, will not help to achieve success in long-term.

Positive punishment can be effective in stopping undesirable employee's behaviour such as tardiness, absenteeism or substandard work performance. In positive punishment we are adding something to reduce undesirable behaviour. For example, an employee who makes mistakes are reprimanded in front of their peers or even spoken to harshly in private. This is positive punishment causing employee to strive to avoid mistakes to avoid the unpleasant condition. However overuse of positive punishment can backfire, as employee can hide their mistakes rather than correct them. Holding employees accountable for their mistakes in a constructive way rather than through punishment will help to improve morale in employees (Hirsh Anne, n.d.).Another major problem with punishment is that it does not really provide any information on more appropriate reactions and increases negative emotional reactions. (Daniels, A.C. 2000).

In conclusion, depending on situation one has to use positive and negative reinforcement or punishment to strengthening a desired behaviour. However, the Premack principle may be used to have a general idea over what types of reinforcers work best. According to David Premack, "high probability activities reinforce low-probability activities. High-probability activities are those most people love to do".

Examples of Operant Conditioning

a. Coaching a new sales staff (fresh from school and this is the person's first job):

To coach a new sales staff, manager can use shaping operant conditioning. This is a technique of reinforcement used to teach new behaviour. As a new sales staff is fresh and this is his/her first job there is need to establish relation between efforts followed by results and subsequent rewards. This can be done by training him/her steps in sales cycle, which include, generation of enquiry from customer, negotiation with customer to receive order (Bharijoo S.B., 2008).

New sales staff should be given current customer base to experiment above sale cycle. When he achieves result in the form of orders he/she should be rewarded in the form of verbal appreciation or in kind. In future new sales staff can be given new set of potential customers.

b. High level of absenteeism after a long weekend (staff taking urgent leave or medical leave):

High level of absenteeism leads to extra cost, stress for regular worker in any organisation. Such behaviour after long weekend also causes discipline issues. Manager can use negative punishment as method to deal with this situation.

Company need to set up strict leave policy.