Reinforcement Theory
BUS 375 Employee Training
Instructor: Eboni LaMar
January 15, 2014
Reinforcement theory is the act of shaping the behavior of individuals in an organization which has a combination of reward and punishment (Booth 1996). Reward and punishment are always used to reinforce desired behavior as well as to eliminate the unwanted behavior. Rewarded behavior will be repeated and strengthen the performance of an organization because reinforcement theory works on observable behavior.
Positive and negative reinforcement is practiced in our organization so as to increase desirable behaviors of the staffs. Some of the positive reinforcements in our organization include; paid holiday leave, some monetary bonuses of employees who work more extra, payment or extra working hours or promotion and attention. This motivates the employees to work extra hard in order to continue enjoying the positive reinforcement in the future. On the other side, negative reinforcement is done by removing the undesirable consequence from the staffs. In case a member of our staff does undesirable behavior, like coming to the job late or even being absent without permission they are punished. The punishment is done by removing the positive reinforcement e.g. Someone may be demoted or not given any paid leave. Sometimes the top managers in our organization practices extinction which means there is no reinforcement. This makes the employees think twice about their behavior because they do not receive any recommendation from their bosses. The staffs feel that their work do not generate any fruitful benefits, they all try to work hard and change their behavior in a more positive manner so as to get positive reinforcement.
In our organization, all the individuals operate in an environment that will enable them to be rewarded. We focus on the effect of consequences of the past behavior and how it will have effect on our future. Managers of various...