Such an attitude is undesirable because organizations depend on the personal initiative and creativity that employees bring to their jobs. Overusing punishment produces apathetic employees who are not an asset to an organization. Sustained punishment can also lead to lower self-esteem. Lower self-esteem, in turn, under- mines the employee’s self-confidence, which is necessary for performing most jobs (see Chapter 3).
Punishment produces a conditioned fear of management. That is, employees develop a general fear of punishment-oriented leaders. Such leaders become an envi- ronmental cue, indicating to employees the probability that an aversive event will occur. So if operations require frequent, normal, and positive interaction between employees and a leader, such a situation can quickly become intolerable. Responses to fear, such as “hiding” or reluctance to communicate with a leader, may well hinder employee performance.
A leader may rely on punishment because it can produce fast results in the short run. In essence, the leader is reinforced for using punishment because the approach produces an immediate change in an employee’s behavior. Thus, the leader may ignore punishment’s long-term detrimental effects, which can be cumulative. A few incidents of punishment may not produce negative effects. The long-term, sustained use of punishment most often results in negative outcomes for the organization.
Individuals have also learned how to “game” the situation to avoid the punisher as the following Ethics Competency feature illustrates.16
Samuel Waksal, former CEO of the biotech firm ImClone, was serving time in a federal prison for insider trading. He was released nine months early. Why? He was rewarded for participating in a prison rehab program for substance abus- ers. The rehab program is a 500-hour program focusing on behavioral and cognitive treatments, during which time participants are housed in a dorm-like unit set apart from the general prison population. The problem was that he was not a substance abuser. Waksal told the probation offi- cer and judge that he was a “social drinker” and that he had never been treated for alcohol addic- tion. In prison, he learned from his fellow inmates that in 1994, Congress passed a law offering up to 12 months off a sentence for nonviolent offenders if they complete a counseling program for alcohol addiction. In 1994, only 3,755 inmates were in the program, but in 2008, there were more than 18,000 prisoners in the program, with a waiting list of more than 7,000.
The rehab program is so attractive to pris- oners that it is now a big business. For a fee of
up to $5,000, lawyers advise their clients how to get into the program and how to maximize their chances of getting a reduction in their sentence. For example, one lawyer advised his clients to show up drunk on the day of their sentencing so they get interviewed right away about their substance abuse problem. They also arrange for doctors to testify, for a consulting fee, that they purportedly treated the individual for alcohol abuse. Drug-dealer-turned celebrity chef Jeff Henderson wrote in his book, Cooked, that even though he never used drugs and hadn’t been around them since he stopped selling them, he was admitted to the program.
While the Bureau of Prisons has rigid eligibil- ity requirements designed to keep out fakers, there are no rigid standards on what constitutes substance abuse.
Despite its problems, the program has had some societal benefits. Male inmates who have participated in the program are 16 percent less likely to commit another crime and 15 percent less likely to relapse into future drug abuse.
Ethics competency
Effective Use of Punishment
Positive reinforcement is more effective than punishment over the long run, but effectively used punishment does have an appropriate place in management. The most common form of punishment in organizations is the oral reprimand. It is intended to diminish or stop an undesirable employee behavior. An old rule of thumb is “Praise in public; punish in private.” Private punishment establishes a different type of contingency of reinforcement than public punishment. A private reprimand can be constructive and informative. A public reprimand is likely to have negative effects because the employee has been embarrassed in front of her peers.
Vague and general oral reprimands should not be given about behavior and especially not about a so-called “bad attitude.” An effective reprimand pinpoints and specifically describes the undesirable behavior to be avoided in the future. It focuses on the target behavior and avoids threatening the employee’s self-image. The effective reprimand punishes specific undesirable behavior, not the employee. Behavior is easier to change than the employee.
Punishment (by definition) trains an employee in what not to do, not in what to do. Therefore, a leader must specify an alternative behavior to the employee. When the employee performs the desired alternative behavior, the leader must then reinforce that behavior positively. Finally, a leader should strike an appropriate balance between the use of pleasant and unpleasant events. The absolute number of unpleasant events isn’t important, but the ratio of pleasant to unpleasant events is. A good rule of thumb is that this ratio should be 5 to 1: five positive reinforcements to one punishment. When a leader primarily uses positive reinforcement, an occasional deserved punishment can be quite effective. However, if a leader never uses positive reinforcement and relies mostly on punishment, the long-run negative effects are likely to counteract any short-term ben- efits. Positive management procedures should dominate in any well-run organization.
Insights for Leaders
For a positive reinforcer to cause an employee to repeat a desired behavior, it must have value to that employee. If the employee is consistently on time, the leader or team leader positively reinforces this behavior by complimenting the employee. What happens if the employee has been reprimanded in the past for coming to work late and then reports to work on time? The leader or team leader uses negative reinforcement and refrains from saying anything. Why? The employee is expected to come to work on time.
What happens if the employee continues to come to work late? The leader or team leader can use either extinction or punishment to try to stop this undesirable behavior. The team leader who chooses extinction doesn’t praise the tardy employee but simply ignores the employee. The use of punishment may include reprimanding, fining, or suspending—and ultimately firing—the employee if the behavior persists.
The following guidelines are recommended for using contingencies of reinforce- ment in the work setting:
Do not reward all employees in the same way.
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Carefully examine the consequences of nonactions as well as actions.
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Let employees know which behaviors will be reinforced.
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Let employees know what they are doing wrong.
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Don’t punish employees in front of others.
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Make the response equal to the behavior by not cheating workers out of their just
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rewards.17
Can global leaders use these guidelines to motivate employees? BMW’s factory located in Oxford, England, produces one of the company’s new products, its 7 series.18 The factory has seen big changes from a few years ago, when Rover owned the factory.
Then the buildings were crumbling and the plant was often half-empty. After acquir- ing the Rover factory, the first challenge for BMW was modernizing the facilities.
They installed the newest production technology, expanded the parking lot, created more appealing landscapes, and in other ways created a more pleasant work environ- ment. As employee Bernard Moss explained, “We had an open day for old employees and they just couldn’t believe the transformation of the plant.”
The improvements were badly needed, but they were costly, too. For the plant to become profitable, productivity had to improve. BMW relies on the factory workers themselves to find ways to cut costs and boost output. To motivate their employees and align their efforts with the needs of BMW, leaders and union leaders designed a new pay system. It offers all employees an annual bonus of £260 (approximately $400) for their ideas. To receive the full bonus, each employee must come up with an average of three ideas, and the ideas must save an average of £800 (about $1,200).
Other changes were also made in the way employees were paid. Under the old system, when production stopped and employees didn’t come to work, they were paid anyway. When the plant was extra busy, they earned overtime pay. Now, when the plant is closed, employees are paid, but there is a new twist. Employees make up the time by putting in extra hours when needed. When things are busy, employees are expected to put in longer hours. Instead of overtime pay, they build up an account of extra time off. Each week quality reports are posted in a plaza that employees pass on their way to lunch. Employees are made aware of any quality problems.
The employees resented the new pay arrangements at first, but now they like it.
According to Moss, “they [employees] are starting to see the advantages of longer holidays.”
Today the plant is even more productive than BMW leaders had hoped for. Employees offered more than 10,000 ideas for improvements, saving the company £6 million ($7.79 million). “If people are highly satisfied, they are more likely to be productive. If they are not satisfied, they are not going to bother [making] suggestions,” says Moss.
Schedules of Reinforcement
Leaders using reinforcement to encourage the learning and performance of desired behaviors must choose a schedule for applying reinforcers. The schedule of reinforce- ment often depends on practical considerations (e.g., the nature of the person’s job and the type of reinforcer being used, deliberately or not). However, reinforcement is always delivered according to some schedule.
Continuous and Intermittent Reinforcement
Continuous reinforcement means that the behavior is reinforced each time it occurs and is the simplest schedule of reinforcement. An example of continuous reinforcement is dropping coins in a soft-drink vending machine. The behavior of inserting coins is reinforced (on a continuous schedule) by the machine delivering a can of soda (most of the time!). Verbal recognition and material rewards generally are not delivered on a continuous schedule in organizations. In organizations such as Mary Kay Cosmetics, Tupperware, and Amway, salespeople are paid a commission for each sale, usually earning commissions of 25 to 50 percent of sales. Although the reinforcer (money) isn’t paid immediately, the salespeople track their sales immediately and quickly convert sales into amounts owed them by the organization. Most leaders, however, supervise employees other than salespeople, and they seldom have the opportunity to deliver a reinforcer every time their employees dem- onstrate a desired behavior. Therefore, behavior typically is reinforced intermittently.
Intermittent reinforcement refers to a reinforcer being delivered after some, but not every, occurrence of the desired behavior. Intermittent reinforcement can be subdivided into (1) interval and ratio schedules and (2) fixed and variable schedules. In an interval schedule, reinforcers are delivered after a certain amount of time has passed. In a ratio schedule, reinforcers are delivered after a certain number of behaviors have been performed.
These two schedules can be further subdivided into fixed (not changing) or variable (constantly changing) schedules. Figure 5.5 shows these four primary types of inter- mittent schedules: fixed interval, variable interval, fixed ratio, and variable ratio.
Learning Goal
3. Explain how positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment, and extinction affect an individual’s performance.
Fixed Interval Schedule
In a fixed interval schedule, a constant amount of time must pass before a reinforcer is pro- vided. The first desired behavior to occur after the interval has elapsed is reinforced. For example, in a fixed interval, one-hour schedule, the first desired behavior that occurs after an hour has elapsed is reinforced. Administering rewards according to this type of schedule tends to produce an uneven pattern of behavior. Prior to the reinforcement, the behavior is frequent and energetic. Immediately following the reinforcement, the behavior becomes less frequent and energetic. Why? Because the individual rather quickly figures out that another reward won’t immediately follow the last one—a certain amount of time must pass before it is given again. A common example of administering rewards on a fixed interval schedule is the payment of employees weekly, biweekly, or monthly. That is, monetary reinforcement comes regularly at the end of a specific period of time. Such time intervals, unfortunately, are generally too long to be an effective form of reinforcement for newly acquired work-related behavior.
Males typically send flowers to their significant other on Valentine’s Day as an expression of their love, devotion, and appreciation. However, as the following Across Cultures competency feature illustrates, sending the right flowers is not as easy as it seems. What color flowers are sent can be seen as either a reward or punisher. Do you remember what the color was of the flowers you sent on Valentine’s Day last year?19
Interval Ratio
Fixed Interval
• reinforcer given after a given period of time
Fixed Ratio
• reinforcer given after a number of behaviors
Variable Interval
• reinforcer given at random times
Variable Ratio
• reinforcer given after a random number of behaviors
Time based Behavior based
Fixed
Variable
FIGU RE 5. 5 Four Types of Intermittent Reinforcement Schedules
According to FTD and Interflora Inc., which send flowers by wire to some 140 countries, the color red is used to cast spells in Mexico, and a white bouquet is necessary to lift the spell. In Spain,
red roses are associated more with lust than with love. In France, a dozen yellow roses are inappro- priate—yellow suggests infidelity—and cut flow- ers by the dozen or any even number are unlucky.