Organisational Behaviour Modification

This essay begins with the definition of Organisational Behaviour Modification including details on the technique theories. These ideas, the four ways, are then taken further and applied for dealing with students behavioural problems in the school. Definitions Organisational Behaviour Modification (OB Mod) is "making specific behaviour occur more or less often by managing its cues and consequences", as Kreitner & Kinicki (1995) noted.

It indicates that when apply OB Mod into practice, one should decrease or increase the behaviour he expected through the way studying the results of the previous behaviour and giving different kinds of techniques.

From the classical conditioning one-step Organisational Behaviour Modification, Stimulus leading to Response (Si?? R), to the operant process analysis, Antecedenti?? Behaviouri?? Consequence (Ai?? Bi?? C), the application of OB Mod is assumed that it is more sensible to deal with observable behaviour and its environmental determinants than perception or the internal causes of behaviours.

(Kreitner &Kinicki: 1995). Therefore, OB Mod actually is the systematic application of operant conditioning techniques to promote the performance of organizationally desired behaviours and discourage the performance of unexpected behaviours, according to Gray (2002).

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Moreover, these kinds of promoting and discouraging are implemented in four ways: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction, which actually use the contingent consequences to control behaviour. (Kreitner & Kinicki: 1995).

As Kreitner & Kinicki (1995) said, positive reinforcement is making behaviour occur more often by contingently presenting something positive whereas by withdrawing something negative if using negative reinforcement. On the contrary, punishment is used to decrease the times a specific behaviour occurs through giving something displeasing and through taking away something satisfied as the way of extinction.

Applications These kinds of techniques may enable manpower management to modify or eliminate undesirable student behaviour and replace it with behaviour that is more compatible with goal attainment.

(Smith: 2002). Thus, it is obviously shown that a behaviour modification program consists of goals, rewards and consequence with details as following: By using these steps, some specific examples would be introduced to associate problems with OB Mod applications for students' behaviours. Firstly, let us take a look at the behavioural problem of destroying the school's plants optionally by students. Since teachers find that the newly abloom flowers are always picked off by students, they decide to prevent this kind of bad performance.

It indicates that goal is settled by the teachers to weaken this undesirable behaviour, picking off the flowers. With the behaviour and requirements defined, the intervention was put into action. Thus, administrators of the school carry out a new rule of protecting the plants into the school regulations. It makes sense that the objective is making the students clearly know the expected and right performance by allowing them see the content of the rule. Next, the teachers will choose one of the four ways to carry out the policy. They point out that if anyone breaks the rule will receive the punishment by fining money and giving oral warning.

Because when using punishment, the probability of the same behaviour occurring will decrease as the outcomes are highly undesirable, as Gabbai (2000) noted. In order to make the consequence consistent with behaviour, a student who behaved so was fined 5 RMB and punished by the teachers. As a result, it is deemed that the behaviour of destroying flowers would be punished and students seldom behave so afterwards. In addition to using punishment to reduce undesirable behavior, behavioral treatment also relies on positive and negative reinforcement to encourage good behavior. (Timer: 2002). Similarly, the second example also follows the steps.

Teachers find that more and more students are unwilling to go to reading room and they would rather buy materials and newspaper themselves because the time limited for opening the reading room. They target motivating students to read materials in the reading room and increasing the times they come there. Therefore, the administrator decide to postpone the time for opening the reading room for the students until 11 o'clock at night and cancel the noon break time. The adjustment of time is the purpose to let students understand that teachers hope them come to the reading room more often than before.

Moreover, as administrator is using the positive reinforcement, they give some new books or magazines as rewards to the students those who go to the reading room most frequently. That is because positive reinforcement is straightforward, where the individual's behaviour adds something desirable to the environment, thereby increasing the probability, under similar circumstances, of that behaviour occurring again in the future. (Gabbai: 2000). Consistently, a student who went to the reading room for most times in January was given the popular magazine <China Traveling> as a reward.

Finally, students are more likely to read magazines and newspapers in the reading room, which represents the influence of the positive reinforcement on increasing the expected behaviour. The third example of the application of OB Mod to the student behaviour is that teachers find that students would rather consume outside school for having dinner rather than buy food in the school owning to the high price and less delicious food made by the dining room of the school. Therefore, the administrators tend to use OB Mod to increase the behaviour of students, eating in the school's eatery.

The goal is definitely set that to welcome student consume more inside the school for food. To let students to be aware of going to the eatery is appropriated, the administrator lower the price of food and add more new taste of the food in the restaurants of the school. They are likely to use negative reinforcement, withdrawing the undesired price and food, as a tool. What Samson (2002) said, the organisaion does something to terminate or lessen something currently going on so as to encourage the anticipant behaviour happens more often.

It is resulted in the revenue of school on the eatery going up that indicates students begin to eat inside the school more and more often. Needless to say, the application of extinction approach processes the same steps as the former three ones such as teachers want to taken away something welcomed and pleased, abolishing the elevator stopping on the ground, first, second and third floor in order to decrease the lazy behaviour of the students that is late for class. Using extinction attempts to eliminate unwanted behaviour that detracts from organisational goal attainment as Smith (2002) noted.

Through the applications of OB Mod in this condition, we know that positive consequences build positive attitudes and negative consequences build negative consequences and avoidance behaviour. (Smith: 2002). Conclusion From the application examples in the real life, we are clear about when OB Mod is put into practice, people obey the several regular steps by using the specific four way to form different kinds of expected consequences so that the behaviour can occur more or less often as estimated.

These examples deal with the antecedent, behaviour, and consequence in the given BiC model, which means if the antecedent is present, then the behaviour is more likely to be displayed and then the consequence is experienced. (Kreitner & Kinicki: 1995). Consequence is the reference whether you will behave in the same way again in the future. That is, if the outcome turns out to be good and satisfied, the behaviours will continue. One a more grandiose scale, behaviour modification may provide the missing link to the fusion of individual and organisational growth. --Fred Luthans