REINFORCEMENT THEORIES

Reinforcement theory is broadly based on learning theory and the works of B.F.Skinner.

The foundation of this approach is on three fundamental factors. Firstly, it is believed that an individual is basically passive and merely mediates the relationship between the forces acting on him and their output. Secondly, reinforcement also rejects the explanation that behavior is based on an individual’s needs, drives, or goals because they believe that such aspects are unobservable and hard to measure. The focus of attention is on behavior itself, which can be observed and measured. Finally, reinforcement theorists state that a relatively permanent change in behavior of an individual result from reinforced behavior or experience. By giving a proper reinforcement, the likely hood that desired behavior will be exhibited can be increased and the likelihood that the undesired behaviors will be exhibited can be reduced or both.

TYPES OF REINFORCEMENT

In operant conditioning, the consequences of behavior (rewards or punishment) are made to occur contingent on the individual’s response or failure to respond. There are three basic components of operant conditioning: i) stimulus, ii) response or performance and iii) consequences or contingencies of reinforcement or rewards. The consequences or types of reinforcement determine the likelihood that a given behavior or response, will be performed in the future. Thus, to change the behavior of an individual, the consequences or reinforcement of the behavior must be changed.

There are four types of reinforcement available to manage or modify an individual’s behavior.

1. Positive Reinforcement

2. Punishment

3. Avoidance Learning

4. Extinction

1) Positive Reinforcement:

The application of this type of reinforcement to a given response or behavior increases the likelihood that the particular behavior by the individual will be repeated. For example, an engineer is given the task of designing a new piece of equipment (stimulus). The engineer exerts a high level of effort and completes the project in time (response). The supervisor reviews the work and not only praises the engineer for his or her work, but recommends, for example, a pay increase for the excellent work (positive reinforcement). Negative reinforcement increases the frequency and strength of a desired behavior by making it contingent upon the avoidance of undesirable consequences for the employees. In order to avoid the heavy fine imposed for not wearing the helmet, the riders of two wheelers are likely to wear helmet continuously even though such an act is not so pleasant and voluntary. In order to avoid the firing of supervisor for late coming, the employee will ensure to report to office on time.

Just to avoid the unpleasantness in the future, the person will try to exhibit the desired work behavior. Thus the negative reinforcement implies the mere anticipation of noxious stimuli from the environment by the employees will reinforce the desired behaviors.

2) Punishment:

The application of punishment is used to decrease the likelihood that the undesirable behavior or response by the individual will be repeated. Just as positive reinforcement strengthens a particular behavior, punishment weakens it. For example hourly workers in a plastics plant are given one hour for lunch (stimulus). When a particular work continually takes an hour and thirty minutes for lunch (response), the supervisor will call the particular worker in his or her office and impose an half-a-day salary cut for their prolonged absent from work (punishment). The use of this punishment will hopefully change this worker’s response back to acceptable behavior. The difference between punishment and negative reinforcement is that in the former case, noxious consequences is applied to decrease the frequency or strength of an undesired behavior, where as in the latter, a noxious consequences is withheld when a desired behavior is exhibited.

3) Avoidance:

Just as with positive reinforcement, this type of reinforcement is a method used by managers to strengthen desired behavior. When a particular reinforcement can prevent the occurrence of an undesired stimulus, it is termed avoidance learning. As the same example cited above, in order to avoid reprimand and criticism, the worker makes a special effort to take only an hour for lunch. With the avoidance learning, the individual works hard to avoid the undesired consequences of the stimulus.

4) Extinction:

Extinction is the withholding of positive reinforcement for a previously acceptable response. With continued non-reinforcement over time, the response or behavior will eventually disappear or be eliminated. Extinction involves three steps: i) identifying the behavior that needs to eliminated ii) identifying the reinforcers which encourage the behavior that is desired to be eliminated and iii) stopping the reinforcers. Behavior that is desired to be eliminated in an organizational setting, a company may offer their salespersons a bonus for every order from a new customer. This results in increased effort on the part of the salespersons to cultivate new sales outlets. After a period of time, the company evaluates this bonus system to be too costly to maintain, and there fore eliminates it. The sales force not seeing any further reward for extra effort in developing new sales, reduces their effort to normal levels. The company, by removing the reinforcement, caused an extinction of the behavior on the part of their sales persons. An undesirable behavior can thus be effectively extinguished by withholding the reinforcers.

Shaping Behavior

Shaping behavior is a process of changing an undesirable behavior to a desirable behavior by following a successive approximation of desirable targeted behavior with proper reinforcement. For example, the manager is interested to increase one of the customer service assistants’ performances from 5 cases to 30 cases per day by properly following the reinforcement techniques. The managers can reinforce the new employee every time he makes incremental progress. For instance, the first time the customer service assistant process 10 cases, the manager can reward her through a word of praise with some cash incentive. When the customer service assistant started processing 15 cases, he would be reinforced further with double the incentive, and the reinforcement will continue every time a new target is achieved which is closer to the ultimate goal. The target set for attending 30 cases per day will be reached and the desired behavior will be shaped. If management rewarded the individual only when he or she showed desirable responses, there might be considerable improvement in their performance. The managers can shape behaviouir by systematically reinforcing each successive step that moves the individual closer to the desired response.

Methods of Shaping Behavior:

There are four ways in which shaping of desirable behavior can be achieved: They are Positive Reinforcement, Negative reinforcement, punishment and extinction. The objective of each of the four reinforcement types is to modify an individual’s behavior so that it will benefit the organization. Reinforcement will either increase the strength of desired behavior or decrease the strength of undesired behavior depending on the organization’s needs and the individual’s current behavior.

The impact of reinforcement on organizational behavior can be summarized as follows:

1. Some type of reinforcement is necessary to reproduce a change in behavior.

2. Some types or categories of rewards are more effective for use in organization than are others.

3. The speed with which learning takes place and how lasting its effects will be determined by the timing of the reinforcement.

Schedules of Reinforcement:

Reinforcement works effective when they follow some schedules or pattern. The two main types of reinforcement schedules are continuous or partial (intermittent)

1) Continuous Reinforcement:

This schedule reinforces the desired behavior each and every time it is demonstrated. Continuous reinforcement helps to direct behaviors toward desired goals quickly. However, it is more expensive to administer, especially if monetary rewards are used as reinforcement. Behaviors reinforced through a continuous reinforcement schedule are also likely to weaken very rapidly once the reinforcements are stopped.

2) Intermittent or Partial Reinforcement:

In this type of reinforcement not every instance of the desirable behavior is reinforced, but reinforcement is given often enough to make the behavior worth repeating. It is like a gambling house – poker machine in which people will continue to play even when they know the chances of winning is one in ten or hundred times. Intermittent reinforcement can be based on either a time frame or behavior response pattern. Intermittent schedules of reinforcement tend to be slow in establishing the desired behaviors. But once established, the behaviors also tend to be sustained after the reinforcements are stopped. There are four types of intermittent reinforcement schedule based on the intermittent intervals and intermittent behavioral responses.

Fixed Internal Schedule

Fixed interval schedule refers to the interval of time when behaviors will be rewarded. It could be hourly, weekly, daily, monthly and so on. For example, organizations reinforce desired behaviors in employees by paying their salaries on a monthly basis. Contractors pay daily wages to employees and other staff members by reinforcement their behaviors of doing a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. These are reinforcements based on a fixed interval schedule.

Variable Interval Schedule:

A variable interval schedule rewards desired behaviors at random intervals of time. Instead of praising every day, a manager praises his employees occasionally, once in a ten days or fortnightly without a fixed time frame. An example of this schedule of reinforcement is a manager patting a good employee whenever he takes unscheduled visits to the shop floor. This kind of reinforcement is easy to administer and the desired behaviors are also sustained over time.

Fixed Ratio Schedule:

A fixed ratio schedule is followed when reinforcement are given every nth time (at a fixed ratio) a desired behavior occurs. An example of this will be suggestion scheme department giving a certificate of commendation” after every fifth suggestion accepted by the department from an employee.

Variable Ratio Schedule:

A variable ratio reinforcement schedule is followed when behaviors are rewarded randomly in terms of the number of times they occur. For example, some times employees are required to stay back at office to complete the required work. In such cases, a manager may reinforce an employee who is staying back to complete his job the first time the person stays late, and not reinforce the same behavior for the next four or five times, but reinforce it once again in the sixth time he stays back and again in fifteenth time he stays back and so on.

Schedules of Reinforcement for Monetary Rewards:

Schedules of Reinforcement Examples of Research

Fixed Interval Weekly or monthly paycheck

Fixed Ratio Piece-rate pay system based on number of units produced or sales commission

Variable Interval Praise, recognition, or promotion awarded at variable time periods

Variable Ratio Monitory bonuses for excellent performance awarded in small sums at various time periods.

Behavior Modification

An approach to motivation in organization that uses operant conditioning as its foundation is called behavior modification. The approach recommended by proponents of behavior modification is that of positive reinforcement. It is reported that positive reinforcers are more effective than negative reinforcers in achievinglasting changes in behavior. Behavior - modification programs in organizations generally follow at least five stages of development:

Stages I: Identifying Critical Behaviors: In this step, the managers has to identify the critical behaviors that make a significant impact on the employee’s job performance. These are those 5 to 10 percent of behaviors that may account for up to 70 or 80 per cent of each employee’s performance. This m ay be a difficult step for companies that use non-job related factors to measure performance (eg. Cooperativeness, friendliness, and other subjective measure).

Stage II: Developing a Baseline Data: This step requires the manager to develop some baseline performance data. This is obtained by determining the number of times the identified behavior is occurring under present condition. In this stage, specific goals for each employee are established. Lowering the absenteeism by 10 per cent is a typical example. Goals may concern such aspects as productivity improvement, decreased absenteeism and so on

Stage III: Identifying Behavioral Consequences: This step is to perform a functional analysis to identify the behavioral contingencies or consequences of performance. The employee keeps a record of his or her daily work. This acts as a self-feedback mechanism

Stage IV: Developing and implementing an intervention strategy: The manager reviews the employee’s performance record and then rewards the positive aspects of the performance, as determined by the goals set in Stage Two and recorded in Stage Three. Reinforcing with recognition, compliments or praise strengthens the desired behavior; withholding of such reinforcement should help make the employee aware of certain deficiencies in his or performance.

Stage V: Evaluating Performance Improvement: Finally, auditing of the effectiveness of this program is assessed OB Modification has been used by a number of organizations to improve employee productivity and to reduce errors, absenteeism, tardiness and accident rates and to improve friendliness towards customers.

Implications of Reinforcement Theory:

The reinforcement of the relationship between behavior and rewards is very important for maintaining motivated behavior on the part of the individual. Employees react positively when they perceive that rewards are contingent on good performance. When individuals are rewarded continually for their good performance, the employees tend to decrease their performance and motivation.

The schedules of reinforcement are found to be very effective in sustaining motivated behavior and make them high productive in their work life. The implications of these results have direct application to the reward system used by organizations. It would be a good idea for manager to reinforce an employee on a continuous basis in the initial stages and after a while, the mangers must switch over to other types of schedules such as fixed interval or fixed ratio, and subsequently the implementation of variable schedules such as variable interval and variable ratio will be of much help to sustain the learned behavior firmly.

For the manager, the most important factor in the application of operant conditioning is that employees should be rewarded contingent on their performance, not for the factors that are nonperformance based. Managers must learn how to design and implement effective reinforcement programs that will enable employees to be productive and satisfied with their work.