Business, Management and Industrial Engineering students learn the subject of Organizational Behavior with a focus on modifying behavior of others in the organization. Fred Luthans, a popular textbook author on the subject, "Behavioral self-management—The missing link in managerial effectiveness" (FredLuthans, Tim R.V.Davis, Organizational Dynamics, Volume 8, Issue 1, Summer 1979, Pages 42-60). So students of "Organizational Behavior" have to take it as on of their learning objectives "Modifying Self-Behavior through Organizational Behavior Learning."
Summary of Some Related Papers
Correction of Habits through Management Principles
Mary J. Stanley, University Library, IUPUIPublished in CIALSA Magazine, Vol.14 no.2/3, Februry/March 1987
Many managers and supervisors ineffectively manage themselves. The concept of behavioral self-management can be applied to any individual’s behavior and managers have to use it and correct their behavior first.
One habit that I would like to try and correct using Fred Luthan’s theory of behavioral self management is procrastination. Luthan’s theory is expressed in his article, “Behavioral Self-Management—the Missing Link in Managerial Effectiveness,” Organizational Dynamics 8:42-60, 1979.
Using Luthan’s theory and applying this technique to this habit to be corrected, cuing stimuli must be identified that intervenes with completion of the tasks put off either for another time or indefinitely. Some of the stimuli, coffee breaks, morning or afternoon mail, telephone calls, professional reading, and discussions with other colleagues can be identified. Now that these stimuli are identified, strategy must be determined on how to change the behavior pattern.
Strategies that could be initiated:
1) If the cup is kept at where the coffee machine is located, the stimulus of the cup the desk is eliminated. Reinforcement of completing the task at hand for the reward of coffee break will serve as a new stimulus for completing the avoided task.
2) By setting a new time to pick up mail after the completion of a task rather than after the known mail delivery will require establishing a new behavior pattern that will remove the cueing stimulus of set patterns to avoid tasks.
3) A note on the telephone to limit calls or to set the telephone to call forwarding at another station until the task has been completed is another strategy for changing stimuli. The latter would be an even greater strategy lessening the chance of delayed action upon the task.
4)Professional reading material is routed to others if tasks at have not been been completed. That would mean receiving materials last. It is an added incentive to keep at the tasks so that I when the materials come forwarding without reading will not take place.
5)Interactions with other librarians are avoided with the polite answer that I will get back. They will not be offended as they are also busy.
Following this S-O-B-C (Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence) management process, procrastinated tasks will be completed as a consequence followed by rewards of coffee breaks, reading of mail and professional literature and enjoyable conversations with fellow librarians. This will provide a new concept of self management and produce a covert reward of self satisfaction for controlling behavior.
As Luthan points out, individuals who are frequently interrupted from tasks that are not completed are probably providing reinforcing consequences for this to occur. I am aware that I provide these interruptions in my behavior pattern to avoid the tasks that I do not want to face. If I can learn to redirect my behavior pattern, I can alter the consequences that lead to this undesirable pattern of incompletion.
I agree with this theory of self management, having been in management positions, I know that it is almost impossible to lead or motivate others to complete tasks when I have problems completing some of my own individual tasks. I often found myself too busy worrying about my own situation instead of departmental issues at hand.
The Behavioral Self Management approach takes into consideration the interactive nature of organizational behavior. I feel there is a strong case for behavioral self-management leading to effectiveness improvement.
SELF-MANAGEMENT of Behavior by Students
(Search more materials and rewrite the matter)Self-management is a strategy in which a student keeps track of his/her own behavior, either for the purpose of increasing a positive behavior or skill or for the purpose of decreasing a problem behavior. Self-management has been used with many students of different ages and with varying abilities.
Self-management has been used to improve:
Engagement
Appropriate peer interactions
Academic performance
Problem behaviors (e.g., aggression, disruption)
Appropriate classroom behavior (e.g., raising hand in class, sitting in seat)
Implementing the Intervention
Step 1: Consider the fit between self-management and the student.
Self-management as an intervention can help a student to monitor his own behavior in order to become aware of when to engage in behaviors or implement skills that he already has in his repertoire. Self-management cannot, by itself, teach a student a skill or behavior.
Therefore, when deciding whether to use self-management with a student, consider the following:
Assess the student to make sure that he knows the behavior, skill, or task that will be the target of the intervention, and is capable of completing it.
If the student will be monitoring his performance of a task, examine the task before beginning the intervention—is the task functional and meaningful for the student? If the task can be altered to make it more meaningful to the student, that by itself may help him to complete the task.
Step 2: Determine what behavior the student will monitor.
When deciding on which behavior to use, consider the following BEHAVIOR TESTS:
Definition Test: The behavior needs to be “definable” so that the student is able to recognize exactly when she is engaging in the behavior. For example, “doing my work” is not as clear of a definition for task engagement as is “eyes on my paper, pencil in my hand, calculating answers to my math worksheet”.
Positivity Test: While self-management procedures can be used to decrease a problem behavior, focusing on increasing positive behaviors (e.g., raising hand to ask for help) is a more positive endeavor for the student.
Number Test: Monitoring a smaller rather than larger number of behaviors will help a student focus on improving her behaviors.
Step 3: Create the materials.
Develop the self-management program:
1.
Define the behavior so that it will be clear to the student. Define the behavior so that the student knows what he looks like when he is engaging in the behavior as well as what he looks like when he is not engaging in the behavior. Defining the behavior also will help in the creation of the questions/checklists and in training the student to use the self-management system.
2. Create a self-management form. First determine what questions the student will ask of himself or what checklist he will use to evaluate whether he is performing the target behavior. Questions can be used if the student is self-monitoring a single behavior (e.g., “When the time went off, was I on-task with my math work?” or “Did I initiate a social interaction with a peer between period 1 and period 2?”). A checklist is a group of questions for a student to use to monitor his performance of steps of a process or his meeting of criteria for an assignment. An example of a process checklist for writing a paragraph might be: “1-I have an introductory sentence that states my main idea. 2-I have three sentences that support my main idea. 3-I have a conclusion sentence that summarizes my main idea. 4-All sentences are complete sentences (subject, verb, capitalization, punctuation). 5-All words are spelled correctly”. Like the definition of the behavior, be sure to make the questions and checklist as simple and clear as possible. Click Here to download additional examples.
After the questions and/or checklists have been developed, create the form. Typically a self-management form is a modified table. Make the materials as AGE-APPROPRIATE and NON-STIGMATIZING as possible.
Step 4: Train the student.
The following training procedures are only a guide—modify them as needed in order to meet the individual needs of students.
1. Before beginning to train the student, write out the steps of the self-management process by picturing how the student will carry out the process. Think about how the student will a) get the necessary materials (e.g., the forms and the audio cue device), b) use the materials during the targeted period (e.g., how often the student will self-manage and how he will record his behavior), c) return the materials after the targeted period is finished, and d) examine the results of his monitoring (i.e., What is the frequency of the behavior that he was self-monitoring?; Is the behavior increasing or decreasing?). Write the steps in simple, clear language so that it will be easy for the student to know what to expect of others, of herself, and when these steps will occur. The steps of the self-management process will also be helpful for teachers to use to keep track of whether or not the students are correctly completing the steps of the self-management process.
2. When first meeting with the student, define the target behavior. Discuss the rationale for choosing this behavior as well as the rationale for using self-management. Check for the student’s understanding by asking her to repeat the target behavior definition.
3. In order to help the student understand what self-monitoring is, first demonstrate all steps for the student. Second, have the student perform all steps while being directed by the teacher. Third, have the student practice the process, first in a simulated setting, then in actual situations.
Special considerations for training:
Prompting should be used to help the student learn the self-management process. In the beginning, prompting may be necessary to ensure that the student is practicing the procedures correctly and without errors. At this stage, prompts should be more direct (e.g., modeling of the steps, or a verbal direction to complete a step).
Step 5: Collect data on the student’s use of the self-management procedures and the student’s target behavior.
Throughout the intervention, the teacher should monitor both the student’s progress with the target behavior as well as the accuracy with which the student completes the self-management procedures. For example, if the self-management process consists of 4 steps (1-Obtain materials from file cabinet; 2-Check y/n for behavior at 1-min intervals; 3-Total the frequency of the behavior being monitored; 4-Hand in self-management sheet to the teacher), then the teacher will observe the student to determine whether he exhibited the target behavior as well as whether he correctly implemented the steps of the self-management process. The teacher should monitor the student’s progress with the target behavior and the self-management procedures more frequently at the beginning of the intervention; the frequency can be reduced as the student becomes more proficient with the process and as his behavior improves.
One simple way that teachers can monitor the student’s target behavior and adherence to the self-management procedures is through “matching”. Matching is when the student and teacher independently monitor the student’s behavior. When the targeted period of self-management is over, the student and teacher compare the information they collected. Generally, the teacher’s recordings are considered to be “correct” and the student’s data are compared to the teacher’s data for accuracy. The purpose of doing this is for the teacher to check the student’s accuracy with both recording the target behavior and with completing the self-management procedures. Matching can occur more frequently at the beginning of the intervention and can be faded as the target behavior improves and the student becomes more independent with the self-management procedures.
There are many variations of self-management. The following are descriptions of some possibilities:
1.
Self-graphing: The student takes the data he collected on the target behavior and graphs it in order to see the progress he has made. For example, a student who is self-monitoring on-task behavior would count the number of times he was on-task and either enter that information into a computer graphing program, or more simply mark his data on a hand-drawn graph in order to visually see the progress he is making. Self-graphing of behavior or performance has been shown in the research to produce as much as a 39 percentile point improvement.
Self-evaluation: This consists of the student evaluating herself on specified criteria using a number scale. For example, the student has two behavioral expectations to meet during class: Follow directions and Keep hands and feet to self. The student can rate herself on each expectation by giving herself either 2 points for meeting the expectation, 1 point for meeting the expectation most of the time, or 0 points for not meeting the expectation. The student is more than just monitoring her behavior; instead she is evaluating her behavior by giving more weight to the positive behaviors.
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