Professional Documents
Culture Documents
[Note: One colleague (Chris Perryer) coined the term MARS BAR to help students
remember that motivation, ability, role perceptions, and situational factors (MARS)
are drivers of individual Behavior And Results (BAR).]
1. Motivation
Internal forces that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of a persons
voluntary choice of behavior
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2. Ability
Natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a
task
Aptitudes -- natural talents that help people learn more quickly and perform
better
Learned capabilities -- acquired skills and knowledge
Competencies -- abilities, individual values, personality traits and other
characteristics of people that lead to superior performance
Person-job matching -- three ways to match people with jobs
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3. Role perceptions
Beliefs about what behavior is required to achieve the desired results
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4. Situational factors
Environmental conditions (e.g. time, people, budget, and work facilities) that
constrain or facilitate behavior
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LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS
Learning -- relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavior tendency) that
occurs as a result of a persons interaction with the environment
Behavior change is evidence of learning
Due to interaction with environment -- study, practice, experience (not instinct)
Influences ability, role perceptions and motivation
Relatively permanent change -- not due to situation
Learning affects behavior/performance through:
Ability -- developing competencies
Role perceptions -- clarifying duties, priorities
Motivation -- linking behavior to rewards, feedback, feelings of accomplishment
Learning also important for knowledge management
Learning explicit and tacit knowledge
Explicit Knowledge -- can be organized and communicated from one person to
another
Tacit Knowledge -- subtle info acquired through observation and experience -cant be explicitly communicated -- only through observation and experience
Challenge of knowledge management is to make more tacit knowledge explicit
2. Negative reinforcement
Removing or avoiding a consequence increases or maintains future behavior
(avoidance learning)
-- e.g. manager stops criticizing employee when performance improves
3. Punishment
A consequence decreases chance of future behavior
a. introducing an unpleasant consequence - e.g. threat
b. removing a pleasant consequence - e.g. losing bonus
Punishment differs from negative reinforcement
4. Extinction
No consequence follows the target behavior
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2. Fixed interval
Behavior is reinforced after a fixed time
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3. Variable interval
Reinforcer administered after a varying length of time
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4. Fixed ratio
Reinforce behavior after it has occurred a fixed number of times
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e.g. piece rate -- paid after produce a fixed number of units completed
5. Variable ratio
Reinforce desired behavior after it occurs a varying number of times
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e.g. making one successful sales call after an average of five calls
provides more complete and accurate information than from a supervisor alone
-- lower level employees feel a greater sense of fairness and open communication
360-degree feedback challenges
-- expensive and time consuming
-- potentially ambiguous and conflicting feedback
-- may be inflated feedback from peers
-- emotional consequences of giving and receiving critical feedback involving
people who work with you
Non-social feedback sources - the job itself or results
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