The Management Theory Toolbox

Episode 12: Carrots and Sticks 2.0 with Dr. Richard (Dick) Malott

• Season 2 • Episode 12

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Key Points:

  • Operant Conditioning and Behavior:
    • Explore the basics of operant conditioning and its relevance to management.
    • Discussion of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon and its implications for behavior management.
    • The role of observation in influencing behavior.
    • Distinction between direct and indirect acting contingencies.
  • Interview with Dr. Dick Malott:
    • Background and work of Dr. Malott in behavior analysis.
    • Consistency of operant conditioning principles across different groups (rats, students, managers, children with autism).
    • Explanation of behavioral contingencies and categories (unlearned/learned rewards and aversive conditions).
    • The importance of rule-governed behavior and rules that are easy to follow.
  • Behavioral Management in Organizations:
    • Effective implementation of behavior management strategies in the workplace.
    • Importance of easy-to-follow rules with immediate, significant, and likely outcomes.
    • Examples of effective performance management in educational and organizational settings.
    • Challenges in implementing and maintaining behavior management systems.
  • Practical Takeaways:
    • Reflect on feedback mechanisms in your workplace.
    • Redesign processes to make rules clearer and feedback more immediate.

Relevant Articles:

  1. Greer, C. R., Lusch, R. F., & Hitt, M. A. (2017). "A Service Perspective for Human Capital Resources: A Critical Base for Strategy Implementation," Academy of Management Perspectives, 31: 137-158.
  2. Podsakoff, P. M., Bommer, W. H., Podsakoff, N. P., & MacKenzie, S. B. (2006). "Relationships Between Leader Reward Behavior and Punishment Behavior and Subordinate Attitudes, Perceptions, and Behaviors: A Meta-Analytic Review of Existing and New Research," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 99: 113-142.
  3. Trevino, L. K. (1992). "The Social Effects of Punishment in Organizations: A Justice Perspective," Academy of Management Review, 17: 647-676.
  4. Molenmaker, W. E., Kwaadsteniet, E. W., & van Dyjk, E. (2016). "The Impact of Personal Responsibility on the (Un)Willingness to Punish Non-Cooperation and Reward Cooperation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 134: 1-15.
  5. Podsakoff, P. M., & Mackenzie, S. B. (1997). "Impact of Organizational Citizenship Behavior on Organizational Performance: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research," Human Performance, 10(2): 133-151.

Link to Dr. Dick Malott's Book:

Next Episode Teaser:

  • Stay tuned for our next episode, where we explore blame and punishment in the context of organizational learning. In the meantime, keep learning, keep growing, and keep adding to your management theory toolbox!

Dr. Richard Malott [Guest], with more than 40 years of experience at Western Michigan University, has used the principles of behavior to construct teaching models and behavioral systems that have been sustained over several decades. As a result, he has taught generations of students to use behavior analysis in their everyday lives as learners, teachers, practitioners, and citizens, and has provided the training grounds for many of the field's leaders in behavioral systems design. Richard Malott is a prolific, creative, and engaging writer who has authored some of the field's most important and widely read publications, including Elementary Principles of Behavior (first with Donald Whaley and then with Maria E. Malott and Elizabeth Trojan Suarez), which is in its eight ed

Speaker 1:

Performance management is to provide rules that are easy to follow and not just pep talks.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to the Management Theory Toolbox. I'm your host, Travis Mallett, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this journey of continuous learning and growth as we navigate the dynamic world of management. Now, this isn't your typical management podcast. Typical management podcast. Yes, there are plenty of resources out there that will give you the ABCs of how to run a meeting, hire someone or even how to fake a sick day without getting caught, but here we like to talk about the behind-the-scenes topics, those concepts and ideas which transcend specific management practices, rather than simply restate them. We aren't going to give you specific tips and tricks for becoming an effective manager. Here at the Management Theory Toolbox, we're interested in the why behind it, all the discoveries of behavioral science, psychology, business and economics that will open our eyes to what's happening behind the scenes.

Speaker 2:

We started in episode one by coming to an understanding of organizations as living human systems, an idea which continues to fuel our exploration into organizational behavior. And our first major topic of organizational behavior is learning, part of which is this idea of operant conditioning we stumbled upon in episode 11. Operant conditioning is more or less the fancy psychology term for carrots and sticks. Of course, it's much more complicated than that. So my listeners in psychology and IOP just cringed. But don't worry, we're going to open the door to some of these complexities in this episode. In essence, operant conditioning is about what happens around us influences what we do. For example, if our behavior produces a good outcome, operant conditioning usually predicts that we will tend to exhibit more of that behavior. That's the proverbial carrot. On the other hand, if our actions produce a punishing outcome, it's predicted that we'll engage in that activity less often. But as we saw in episode 11, there are some interesting cases where operant conditioning fails entirely to account for the sometimes surprising human behaviors. How powerful is operant conditioning?

Speaker 2:

To find out, let's visit the ideas of English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. A philosopher, Are we in for another philosophical tangent? Well, actually we're going to be talking about architecture. Oh wait, yes, yes, this is definitely a philosophical tangent. So here we go. Who guards the guards?

Speaker 2:

This question of accountability and control stemming from ancient Rome plagued the mind of Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and social theorist. Bentham pondered deeply over this dilemma, seeking a solution that could apply to various institutions, from prisons to schools and beyond. The answer, he believed, lay in the power of observation. Bentham hypothesized that the potential for observation could be used to influence behavior. If individuals believed they were always being watched, they would regulate their actions accordingly, and this led to his revolutionary design of the panopticon, a circular prison with a central watchtower. Inmates in the surrounding cells could never be certain when they were being observed, compelling them to act as if they were always under scrutiny. Despite the elegance of his solution, Bentham's ideas did not gain traction. During his lifetime, However, Bentham's concepts were not forgotten.

Speaker 2:

In 1812, the British government faced persistent problems with Newgate Prison and other London prisons. This prompted them to fund the construction of a new prison in Millbank based on Bentham's Panopticon plans. Millbank Prison, which opened in 1821, became a pioneering model for a further 54 prisons built in Victorian Britain. The Panopticon proved so effective that it left a lasting impact on the philosophy of social control and management. In 1965, historian Shirley Robin Lettlin argued that the panopticon was a device of such monstrous efficacy that it left no room for humanity. Bentham's panopticon served not only as a practical solution to the management of prisons, but also as a profound illustration of operant conditioning and behavioral contingencies the observation of prisoners by guards and the observation of guards and prison administrators by the public created a system of mutual accountability. This layered surveillance seemed a solid answer to the age-old question who guards the guards?

Speaker 2:

The legacy of Bentham's panopticon extends beyond its physical architecture. It demonstrates the power of indirect contingencies and the subtle ways in which potential observation can influence behavior. Bentham's vision, though initially overlooked, ultimately provided a powerful framework for understanding and managing human actions within institutional settings. So clearly, operant conditioning is more complicated than simple reward, punishment, carrot and stick paradigms. But some immediate questions include well, what counts as a reward? What if a behavior causes the removal of a good thing, but isn't strictly the imposition of a negative consequence? What about direct versus indirect acting contingencies? Well, there's a lot to sort through. So we're going to need some help, and here to guide our exploration is Dr Dick Malott, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Western Michigan University. Hi, Dick, and welcome to the show. I'm really excited to talk to you today. Before we get started, go ahead and tell us a bit about your background and your work.

Speaker 1:

So I'm Dick Malott. I'm a Professor Emeritus of Psychology in the Behavior Analysis program at Western Michigan University. I've been inspired by BF Skinner and his Skinner box. He had a box, as most of you may know. Put a rat in the box, the rat would press a lever to get a cup of water or a pellet of food. So I started working with rats in Skinner boxes. I progressed to pigeons and Skinner boxes. I progressed from there to college students in classrooms, then grad students in classrooms, then organizational managers, business managers, and from there to children with autism. My general areas of teaching and of interest have been organizational behavior management, behavior system analysis and autism. So I'm really happy to be chatting with you.

Speaker 2:

Great Thank you. Before we actually dive into the material, I'm curious. You talked about starting with the rats, moving on to college students, graduate students and so forth. How much consistency in operant conditioning principles have you found across those various groups?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'll talk about that a little bit. My notion is that the same principles of behavior apply all the way for all those groups. The major difference is language. Lower organisms do not have language. Many autistic children do not have language, and that's the big game changer. I think that Skinner's principles from the Skinner box apply across the board.

Speaker 2:

Now, in your textbook Principles of Behavior, which I'll link to in the show notes for our listeners, you talk a lot about different categories of behavioral contingencies. Could you walk us through some of those categories?

Speaker 1:

afterwards he has food. For a contingency to be direct acting or to reinforce or reward the behavior of Rudolph the rat or any of us, it must occur within 60 seconds. He presses the lever and he needs to get that food within 60 seconds, otherwise if the food comes two minutes later, it'll reinforce some other behavior. If the contingencies are greater than 60 seconds, those are indirect acting contingencies. So we have direct acting and indirect acting.

Speaker 1:

Now Skinner talks about reinforcement and had a tendency to create terminology that was very precise that no layperson understood, and I prefer terminology that's not quite as precise but everybody understands. So I'll try to use the term reward instead of reinforcers. There are two basic contingencies One involves rewards and one involves punishers or aversive conditions, and of each of those there are two types. There's unlearned rewards and learned rewards and unlearned aversive conditions. Unlearned aversive conditions, for example, unlearned rewards would include food, water, sex, appropriate temperatures. Learned rewards might be the grade of A on a course, a smile, a nod, the expression hey, good job. Smile and nod the expression hey, good job. Aversive conditions unlearned could be too much heat, too much cold, too much pressure, pain, bad taste, bad smells. Learned aversive conditions might be sloppy job, worst job I've ever seen. Those are learned aversive conditions. They are effective essentially for all animals, as we were talking earlier. And then we have avoidance of aversive conditions.

Speaker 1:

Escape is when an aversive condition occurs and you make a response to escape that aversive condition. So Rudolph, the rat in the scanner box is getting shocked. He presses the lever and that turns off the shock. He escaped the shock. Someone's saying stuff to you. You don't like. You leave the room. Those are all escape contingencies. There are also indirect acting contingencies and these are the most relevant to the workplace. While we don't think about direct acting contingencies, when they occur we itch and we scratch. That's a direct acting contingency. We don't think about it. But in direct acting contingencies we almost always think about them and they involve what we call rule-governed behavior. A rule is simply a description of the contingency. If you do this, you don't have something. You do this, you get it. And the rule may describe a rewarding contingency. You ain't got no food. You do this, you got food. It may describe an escape contingency. Rule is too hot. I'll push that button over there and it'll cool down.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so we have all these contingencies and in your book you talk about these as rules, kind of like Boolean logic for my listeners who are in scientific fields If this behavior, then this consequence and so forth, can you talk a little bit about these contingencies as rules and what are some implications for practice?

Speaker 1:

Behavioral contingencies are the fundamental basis of behavior analysis, which is what we're talking about. So there are two kinds of rules. There are rules that are easy to follow and rules that are hard to follow. And the easy to follow rules are rules that specify immediateable and probable outcomes. If you touch that hot grill, you will immediately receive the painful burn and it's sizable. It's definitely going to happen. That's a rule that's very easy to follow.

Speaker 1:

Rules that are hard to follow specify improbable outcomes, and one of the most common are highway safety rules. Wear your seat belt, because you might get in an accident. Wear your safety equipment at work. Put that helmet on or you might get hurt. The problem with those are they're improbable. You don't need to wear your seat belt. You're not going to get hurt. The odds are really low. I've been working here for two years and I've never seen anyone get hit on the head when they didn't have their helmet on. The other kind of rule that's hard to follow is those that have small but cumulatively significant consequences to your health and also the health of your equipment. People have a really hard time dieting. Man, I could just have one candy bar, it ain't gonna matter. Oh, okay, one more. I'm gonna just have regular meal, but tonight I'm gonna celebrate, and then a little celebration after that or a huge dinner. I'm gonna start my diet in a couple days. It's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1:

And we just procrastinate. Procrastinate on our diet, exercise the same thing. I don't feel like exercising today, I'll do it tomorrow. Those are rules that are hard to follow, as we can see looking around at our population. The other area is long-range projects. I'm going to start it when I get around to it. It's a problem I'm having somewhat with my book. It's a problem I have every time I'm trying to write something In the workplace.

Speaker 1:

If you've got a project to write up and it's going to be a lot of work or analysis to do, it's going to be a lot of work you can always start it tomorrow, and at the university we have really bright doctoral students who get all their coursework finished. They may even get all their research done and then they have to write up a darn dissertation. Quite a few of them just never get around to it or never get it finished. They could, but they can start tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

In the area of organizational behavior management, we provide behavioral contingencies that are described by rules that are easy to follow. We use organizational behavior management in organizations where performance can be improved. So we add rules for deadlines for long-range tasks and projects, and what I did with my doctoral students was break the long-range project into weekly sub-goals, and that's what I'm going to have to do with myself for my book, I just realized as I'm talking to you about this. So every week I have a sub-goal to accomplish and they may still procrastinate on it. They may spend all night before our meeting that week on Friday, but it ain't, like you, procrastinated for a year. Performance management is to provide rules that are easy to follow and not just pep talks, and that's what I think we need to do in organizational behavior management one question I have is about the severity of the consequences, especially negative consequences.

Speaker 2:

In episode seven I talked about managers letting their employees learn from their mistakes in certain circumstances. So the example I discussed was I was working on a project. At work, I missed one detail in my design and when we released my design, we were immediately hit with a stop shipment, which is this really costly situation where you have to stop production of a product, and I remember I had to stay really late that night working with manufacturing to solve the problem and fix the products that contained the mistake, and I never, ever, forgot that experience.

Speaker 1:

You know, a good way for people to learn by experience would be we don't need any laws about wearing seatbelts. Let them get seriously injured and then one of their loved ones get killed. They'll learn from that experience and they'll wear seatbelts. Actually, in truth, I knew a family related to me and the mother and two daughters were in an accident and they didn't have the seatbelts on and one daughter was killed and, man, they wore their seatbelts religiously for over a month and then well, and it fell apart. So it may depend on the severity of the consequences and I would suspect actually, as you describe it, the consequence for your organization was not trivial. They might have been willing to pay a little bit for some organizational behavior management that would have prevented that.

Speaker 2:

Now in organizational settings. How can these behavior management strategies be effectively implemented to shape behavior and ensure consistent, reliable outcomes?

Speaker 1:

talk about shaping when it's a skill that the person doesn't have and you're going to train them by getting them closer and closer to being able to play the piano or sing on. Key Behavior management would be to try to get the behavior to occur with the frequency and reliability that it needs to occur. It's powerful in managing other people or your own behavior. There's no question. There's a lot of data. If you use rules that are easy to follow and have significant consequences, then there'll be not as trouble getting the behavior to occur.

Speaker 1:

I would say the biggest problem is setting up the system and managing the system to manage the behavior. In a very simple example in the classroom, teachers often have behavior problems with the kids and lack of studying and disruptive behavior. It's fairly easy to design performance management program that will control the kids' behaviors and get them behaving so that they will learn and they will not disturb everyone else. But you've got one teacher, maybe a couple of teachers' aides and 20 kids or 30 kids, and that ain't easy. The most difficult problem is implementing and maintenance of the system. A common problem is people attend workshops and they leave the workshops full of enthusiasm and it's really hard to get it implemented and hard to keep it going to be done, but you need to take that into consideration. So you need a system that you've got the frontline staff, you've got supervisors and then you've got those supervisors. You need someone to supervise them and you need that system to go all the way up. And the top dog also needs somebody to supervise them somehow. But they need some accountability often.

Speaker 2:

So it takes a whole place to end because it ties right in with our earlier tangent exploring that age-old philosophical question who guards the guards? But I just want to thank you for sharing your insights on performance management. I think especially your explanation of the importance of easy-to-follow rules is a tool that our listeners can add to their management toolboxes, tool that our listeners can add to their management toolboxes. So we appreciate your time and expertise and I'm sure our listeners have gained valuable knowledge on how to effectively shape and manage behavior in their own organizations.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to hearing the final product.

Speaker 2:

Thanks much, thank you. Well, there's certainly a lot more under the hood. When we look closely at the idea of carrots and sticks, my takeaway is definitely that importance of easy-to-follow rules. Dr Millott explained that these aren't just rules that are simple and easy to remember. Instead, easy-to-follow rules are those where the consequences of behavior are immediate, significant and likely to occur. Immediate, significant and likely to occur. These characteristics make the rules effective in shaping behavior, because individuals can clearly see the direct link between their actions and the outcomes. I think that was the case in my experience at work where the mistake in my design produced an immediate, significant outcome, and that's probably one of the reasons that made such a big impression on me is because there was a clear link between the action and the outcome.

Speaker 2:

This week, take some time to reflect on the feedback mechanisms in your workplace, particularly those with consequences that are unlikely to occur or not immediate. For example, if someone makes a mistake, is there a real and timely consequence, or does it often go unnoticed? When someone makes a mistake, is there a real and timely consequence, or does it often go unnoticed? Consider how you can redesign these processes to make the rules clearer and the feedback more immediate. So with that, thank you for joining me on another episode of the Management Theory Toolbox. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we explore blame and punishment in the context of organizational learning. In the meantime, keep learning, keep growing and keep adding to your management theory toolbox. Thank you.

People on this episode

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Travis Mallett, ALM

Host
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Richard W. Malott, Ph.D.

Guest