Bringing About Changes in Workplace Behavior

Abstract

The Model of Hierarchical Complexity provides the basis to introduce and define how task actions are sequenced. It is applied to organizational and institutional atmosphere and its developmental relationship with individuals. We define and discuss stages of development as well as contingencies in workplace settings. We explain how a particular workplace’s atmosphere specifies contingencies. Research is introduced to illuminate the concepts. We characterize the hierarchical complexity of peoples’ work and of organizations in which they work. Formal stage organizations are characterized by bureaucracy, and one-dimensional logicallyunderstood regulations. Systematic stage organizations look to the purpose of regulations, balance multiple relationships to achieve goals. Metasystematic stage organizations value creativity over conformity. We propose that the hierarchical complexity of the contingencies that constitute a particular workplace atmosphere affects how the individuals within it behave. Individuals’ stage of performance is described by the hierarchical complexity of the task demands and contingencies that they discriminate and prefer. “Power” is explained as the behavioral control of contingencies that distribute reinforcement and reinforcement opportunity. We discuss the role of power in setting favorable conditions that reinforce individuals’ development. Preliminary results of this research indicate that workplace atmosphere typically places a ceiling on individual moral development rather than encouraging development to the highest stages. The concepts are applied to the future of institutions such as research universities and organizations. Many companies have short lives because they become less creative over time. Their present “successful” culture resists innovation. Research universities and start-ups are the exceptional organizations. Some of the new start-ups are organized usingMetasystematic principles such as Google. Behavior analysis now addresses a number of useful organizational issues, such as getting people to work faster, more efficiently, and reducing worker turnover. Organizational behavior modification improves/maintains individual or organizational performance. Improving performance necessitates an increase in the quantity, quality, and timeliness of training. In turn, an improvement in performance increases customer, client, and investor satisfaction, implementation of mission objectives, and safety. From a systems analysis perspective, improving performance effectively changes several things about a job. One is increasing the efficiency of the way in which work gets done. Another is that improving performance often necessitates an alteration of what individuals do in their jobs. This can result independently in the development of measurement systems for various units in the organization, which assists appropriate levels of organization to determine measurable goals for performance. Hierarchical Complexity of People’s Work and of Organizations in Which They Work Commons, Krause, Fayer, & Meaney (1993) originally set forth a behavioral developmental account of stages of atmosphere in organizations. In this paper, we update this account and analyze what might affect the survival and reinvention of organizations. This paper presents a method for characterizing the relationship between individuals and their workplace environment with respect to individual development in a variety of domains on a various tasks. We hypothesize that this is a dynamic, two-way relationship, and that connections exist between individual development and the stage of development embodied in the workplace environment. We construe development as the developmental stage of performance on tasks of importance in the workplace. Using a scoring scheme derived from the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (Commons & Richards, 1984a, 1984b, Commons, Trudeau, et. al, 1998), we have scored sample individual responses and compared the stage of individual responses to the stage of response required or embodied in organizational decision making, both formal and informal. We are particularly interested in identifying the contingencies by which this relationship is governed and the reinforcement mechanisms (Skinner, 1938) through which they are enforced. This paper describes a method for investigating and characterizing these relations that is nonarbitrary and highly precise. Institutional atmosphere refers to the dynamic relationship between an institution and those individuals who comprise it. Atmosphere includes the contingencies that affect individual behavior within an organization and the methods by which contingencies are set. We define a contingency as a relationship between events (i.e., behaviors or responses) and outcomes. Consequences that increase the likelihood of the event that they follow are termed reinforcers. Consequences that decrease the likelihood of the event that they follow are termed punishers. What the environment contributes to behavior, we suggest, can be described in terms of contingent relations among events. We also maintain that the reasoning of individual members within any workplace has significant bearing upon organizational atmosphere. As reasoning develops in complexity, individuals are increasingly capable of understanding the perspectives of others, and of evaluating and integrating competing perspectives. These skills are integrated into the formal and informal policymaking and policy enforcement structures of the organization. The explicit statements of perceived organizational contingencies are referred to as verbalized causal rules or contingencies (Commons, Kantrowitz, Buhlman, Ellis, & Grotzer, 2007). The implicit perceptions of causality are the perceived causal rules or contingencies. In order to characterize atmosphere at the level of organizational macrostructure, we believe that it is necessary to examine the individual contingencies embodied in atmosphere, which constitute the organizational microstructure (Goffman, 1967). Microstructure and macrostructure are inseparable. Atmosphere is, therefore, a characterization of the sum of individual contingencies operative within an organization and as Kohlberg (1985) emphasized, their justifications. Atmosphere, therefore, refers to the manner in which the institution and individuals either constrain or motivate the development of individuals and the development of the organization.