第1个回答 2016-04-22
Managementand Organisation Behaviour
People always pay attention to their work, company should be bettermotivate employees to make positive contribution, it is an important role ofmanagement. Motivation mainly refers to the psychological processes stimulatehuman motivation. In other words, motivation is the set of forces thatinitiates, directs and makes people persist in their efforts to accomplish agoal (McWilliams,A & Williams C2014 ). Reinforcement theory says thatbehaviour is a function of its consequences, that behaviours followed bypositive consequences will occur more frequently and that behaviours followedby negative consequences, will occur le ss frequently (McWilliams,A &Williams C2014 ). Reinforcement theory has two parts: reinforcementcontingencies and schedules of reinforcement. Reinforcement contingency is thecause-and-effect relationship between the performance of a specific behaviourand a specific consequence(McWilliams,A &Williams C2014). There are fourreinforcement contingencies: positive reinforcement、negative reinforcement、 punishment and extinction. Thisessay will introduce the four reinforcement contingencies, explain the advantages and disadvantages of thefour reinforcement contingencies. And refers to an example of Losada and Heaphy(2004) to show how reinforcement theory works and how it can be used tomotivate.
Positive reinforcement that strengthensbehaviour by following behaviours with desirable consequences(McWilliams,A& Williams C2014). Which simply means, thepositive reinforcement is to reward those who meet the organizational goals, sothat these behaviours are further strengthened thus conducive to therealization of the organization’s goal. Positive reinforcement always occurs onthe workplace. For example: when a person is rewarded to encourage behaviours,the person will feel happy, at the same time, the behaviour of this person willincrease both in terms of reaction strength and speed. So that we can see thebehaviour will bring some results, these results will also affect our nextstep. Positive reinforcement occurs when the result of the action leads us toan increase in the probability of that behaviour. In positive reinforcement,the behaviour of the result is positive which can motivate people to work andget reward. For example, an employee who is praised for his work report ofspecific type will continue to direct his energies toward that report in thefuture(Scott et. al, 1988 ). Positive reinforcement is common in the workplace.Managers may encourage or reward for completing a project task in a timely, andthe employee deal with customer well, he will get up position when challengescome up. A good example of Losada and Heaphy (2004), though study Losada andHeaphy (2004) shows that the ratio of high performance team is 5.614, moderateperformance team is 1.855 and low performance team is 0.363. In other words,this study found that management teams were most successful when theircommunication consisted of approximately 85 percent positive comments and 15percent negative comments (Losada and Heaphy 2004). The findings of thisresearch shows that the advantage of positive reinforcement is can improveemployees’ performance. If employees are guided by positive reinforcement inthe workplace, they can suffer from much more stress and they will perform forlonger periods. Positive reinforcement helps managers builds relationships withemployees, communicates with them and through builds confidence to motivate andcoaches them to achieve organizational goals. Positive reinforcement willcreate a more pleasurable experience at work. At the same time also to avoidthe negatives effects associated with punishment or negative reinforcement, forexample: dismay, anger and depression. And the disadvantages of positivereinforcement is not always good. Too much positive reinforcement will lead tofatigue state because of the too much praise, which reduces the lowerperformance.
On the contrary, negative reinforcement isnot always bad. Negative reinforcement always confused with punishment.Negative reinforcement is reinforcement that strengthens behaviour bywithholding on unpleasant consequence when employees perform a specificbehaviour (McWilliams,A & Williams C2014). Negative reinforcement also knowns as avoidance learning (McWilliams,A& Williams C2014). Like positivereinforcement, the condition of the negative reinforcement is to stop or avoidthe behaviour of the result or to increase the frequency of these actions bythe withdrawal or weakening of the original negative stimuli or conditions.Negative reinforcement methods include revocation of criticism, punishment,degradation and so on, sometimes to restore the bonus is also a negativereinforcement. Negative reinforcement is to strengthen the specific behaviourby experiencing the results of the negative state. Negative reinforcement isoften used in education or enterprises. For example: some enterprises in theperformance feedback process, let those with poor performance staff check theirdeficiency on the meeting, this is actually a kind of punishment, those peoplenot come to power the negative reinforcement; some enterprises make higherperformance staff to share their successful experience on the meeting, to givereward, this is positive reinforcement, and those without people came to powerby the negative punishment. The negative punishment provides the direction ofthe efforts of the staff. In some context, a behaviour might be seen aspositive whereas in some other it might be categorized ad negative(Miguel 2001,p.99). Study Losada and Heaphy (2004), these authors communicate with 60 teamsthrough positive or negative. the result showed there are 15 percent negativecomments(Losada and Heaphy 2004). It is evidencing that the relationship betweenpositive and negative behaviour are very important. Therefore, we can see thatwhether commercial or non-commercial organization to a great extent, it isrecommended to use positive reinforcement. the advantages of negativereinforcement that can increase behaviour and provides compliance to minimumsstandards of performance(Joyce Bruce 1972). And the disadvantages of negativereinforcement that only produces enough to meet minimums. People experiencingnegative reinforcement will only work as hand as they have to in order to avoidthe consequences; does not encourage their manimum effort.
By contrast, punishment is not like negativereinforcement. Punishment reinforcement that weakens behaviour by followingbehaviours with undesirable consequences(McWilliams,A &Williams C2014 ). Punishment occurs in oneof two possible way: somthing undesirable can be applied to the unwantedbehaviour or something desirable can be withdrawn(Villere& Hertman 1991,p.28). Toyota is a good example, this is a recall on quality issues, we can sawa decade low in sales and market share decline for the first time in years, andfor the first time in 5o years. Because this kind of situation, Toyota of theCOE and other top management will be deducted 10% of wages, and to confiscatetheir bonuses(McWilliams,A & Williams C2014). Punishement is often used in education. Theadvantages of punishment that it helps to deter. Punishment can help to makethe students seriously their studies, also help to keep students under control.It will make very stubborn child obedience to authority, because they fear thatif they do not the right thing, they might be beaten. And punishment has moredisadvantages, for instance: it can sometimes backfire, it sometimes makechildren not longer afraid. Punishment in the student’s mind will produce aserious fear, it is easy to make theme drop out of school. And human rightsgroups and advocate want to consider the world’s children’s physicalpunishment, which they believe is a form of child abuse.
Extinction is a reinforcement strategy inwhich a positive consequence is no longer allowed to follow a previouslyreinforced behaviour, thus weakening the behaviour(McWilliams,A &Williams C2014). An extensive review ofthe literature by Hamner(1983) on motivation indicates that the most productivereinforcement programmers use a maximum amount of positive reinforcement and aminimum amount of punishment(Villere & Hartman 1991, p.28). Through removethe positive consequence, extinction weakens the behaviour, making it lesslikely to occur(McWilliams,A & Williams C2014). Based on positive reinforcement ideas, when acompany performed well, most companies will give the company leaders andmanagers a lot of financial in return(McWilliams,A & Williams C2014 ). Based on the idea of extinction, you would thenexpect that leaders and managers would not be rewarded when companies performpoorly(McWilliams,A & Williams C2014). The advantage of extinction that is effectively reduce behaviour. Thedisadvantage of extinction that it may take a while for extinction to have aneffect.