Describe some of the antecedents available in your current (or past) workplace. Were they effective for supporting staff behavior?

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Journal of Organizational Behavior Management

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The Establishing Operation in Organizational Behavior Management

Judy L. Agnew PhD

To cite this article: Judy L. Agnew PhD (1998) The Establishing Operation in Organizational Behavior Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 18:1, 7-19, DOI: 10.1300/ J075v18n01_02

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1300/J075v18n01_02

Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

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TALK ABOUT THE WAY WE TALK: CONCEPT NARRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

The Establishing Operation in Organizational Behavior Management

Judy L. Agnew

ABSTRACT. More comprehensive behavior analyses of organiza- tional interventions should lead to better prediction and control of organizational behavior. Better analyses require the adoption of more extensive behavioral concepts into organizational behavior management (OBM) research and practice. The purpose of this pa- per is to discuss such a concept: the establishing operation (Michael, 1982). A definition of the establishing operation is presented fol- lowed by three examples. [Anicle copies availuble for a fee fmm 7he H a w n h Documenl Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: [email protected]]

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Judy-Agncw. PhD, Aubrey Daniels and Associates, 353 I Habersham at Northlake. Tucker, GA 30084.

The author would like to thank Dr. Bruce Hesse for his conceptual and cdito- rial assistance, and Dr. William Redmon for his assistance on early drans of this article.

Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. Vol. 18( 1 ) 1998 0 1998 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 7

8 JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT

In order to gain a better understanding of organizational behav- ior, more comprehensive behavior analyses of organizational inter- ventions should be conducted (Agnew & Redmon, 1992; Duncan & Bruwelheide, 1986; Mawhinney, 1975; Peterson, 1982). Such a practice necessitates the adoption of concepts which provide ex- planatory power beyond that provided by the simple three-term contingency. The establishing operation (Michael, 1982) is a con- cept which leads to greater understanding of the complex world of contingencies operating within organizational settings. The estab- lishing operation (EO) is defined as a motivative variable which establishes the effectiveness of certain stimuli as consequences, and alters the probability of behavior which has been consequated with those stimulus events. A more complete definition of the establish- ing operation will be presented, then three examples will be out- lined to explicate the use of the establishing operation in analysis, interpretation, and manipulation of organizational behavior.

THE ESTABLISHING OPERATION

Most behavior analyses are presented in terms of the three term contingency (antecedents, behaviors and consequences). In a sim- ple example, a child is reinforced with juice for asking for a drink in the presence of juice. An analysis of this behavior (asking for a drink) would typically include reference to the discriminative stim- ulus (presence of the juice) and the consequent stimulus (receiving the juice). Asking for a drink would be said to be reliably controlled via presentation of the discriminative stimulus and contingent rein- forcement. Michael (1982) has argued, however, that there is a fourth variable influential in the control of behavior upon which the momentary effectiveness of the three term contingency depends. He adopted the term “establishing operation” to describe this vari- able.’ Michael defines establishing operations as motivative vari- ables having two effects: ( I ) they momentarily alter the reinforcing or punishing effectiveness of some stimulus events, and (2) they momentarily alter the frequency of behavior which, in the past, has been consequated with those stimulus events whose value has been altered. The most common examples of EOs are deprivation and satiation. In the above example, if the child is liquid satiated, the

Talk About rhe Way We Talk: Concepr Narralion and Developmenr 9

behavior will not be emitted regardless of the presence of the discri- minative stimulus and the reinforcer. In order for juice to be rein- forcing and thus support the behavior of asking for a drink, the child must be liquid deprived. Level of liquid deprivation is an establish- ing operation because it alters the reinforcing value of juice (in this case reduces it) and alters the frequency of asking for a drink (in this case, decreases it), which has been reinforced with juice in the past.

Schlinger (1993) suggests that behavior analysts may take the EO for granted because research has always required the manipula- tion of some EO in order to successfully manipulate behavior. In the lab, pigeons are typically food or water deprived, in applied re- search developmentally delayed clients are often deprived of certain favored foods, beverages, toys or activities. Deprivation of some sort has simply been arranged as a necessary step in the condition- ing process. Some unique manipulations of EOs have been de- scribed in the literature. Hall and Sundberg (1987) describe the manipulation of EOs in teaching mands (requests) to deaf individu- als. They presented the individuals with instant coffee powder (the EO) which made hot water a positive reinforcer. Thus they created a reinforcer which could then be used to change behavior. This is similar to a familiar EO manipulation used by bar owners: provid- ing salty snacks like pretzels and peanuts to make patrons thirsty and thereby increase the reinforcing value of liquids. In business applications EO manipulations are rarely described although they are undoubtedly used. The field of marketing provides a perfect example. W h y do Nike and Reebok vie for the latest basketball hero to be their spokesperson? Because having a popular person wearing and selling their shoes is an EO which increases the reinforcing value of those shoes for their consumers, thereby increasing sales. Marketing in general is an attempt to change the reinforcing value of the item being marketed and increase buying behavior.

Establishing operations also occur naturally, that is they are not necessarily contrived. For example, consider a couple who recently learned they are going to have a baby. The news of the baby may be an establishing operation which alters the reinforcing value of put- ting in paid overtime at work and evokes behavior which leads to overtime. Prior to the news of the pregnancy, overtime may have

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been a punisher to the couple in that it represented time away from leisure activities and the additional money earned may not have .been reinforcing enough to compensate for the loss of free time. With baby on the way, however, the value of the money received for overtime is altered (increased) due to the new expenses related to child care. In addition, behavior which in the past has lead to over- time will increase (e.g., volunteering for overtime work). Such examples are common. Changes in life circumstances, economic changes and work environment changes are all potential establish- ing operations which have an impact on organizational behavior.

Thus, while the establishing operation is not usually part of the vocabulary used by OBM researchers and practitioners at this time, the concept does have application in this area. The EO adds to our understanding of organizational behavior by ensuring analyses take into account the dynamic nature of consequences and the behavior they influence. In order to appreciate the value added by including the establishing operation in analyses and interventions, it is impor- tant to discriminate between various antecedent events such as dis- criminative stimuli, establishing operations, and conditioned and unconditioned elicitors (Schlinger, 1993). Since these antecedent events have different fimctional effects such discriminations are important. In OBM analyses, the EO is easily confused with the SD. While the SD evokes behavior by signaling the availability of rein- forcers, the EO alters the value of consequent stimuli in addition to havin an evocative effect. A more detailed discrimination between the S % and the EO is examined in the first example.

EXAMPLE 1: GOAL SETTING

The usefulness of including EOs in OBM analyses is evident when used to interpret the popular organizational practice of goal setting. Goal setting is one of the most widely used and most fre- quently studied performance management techniques in industrial/ organizational psychology. While the effectiveness of goal setting (in combination with some form of feedback or knowledge of re- sults) has been established and agreed upon by behavioral and cognitive psychologists alike, debates have raged around the ques- tion of why goal setting works. Behavioral psychologists propose

Talk About the Way We Talk: Concept Narration and Development I 1

that a goal is an antecedent stimulus which gains stimulus control over behavior related to achieving the goal by virtue of being corre- lated with reinforcing consequences for those behaviors. While some behaviorists refer to goals in the broader terms of antecedent stimuli (e.g., Komaki, Collins, & Penn, 1982), others describe goals more precisely as discriminative stimuli (e.g., Fellner & Sulzer- Azaroff, 1984). Careful consideration of the precise definition of a discriminative stimulus suggests that referring to goals as SDs is often not appropriate. A discriminative stimulus is a stimulus in the presence of which a response produces a reinforcer and in the absence of which a response does not produce a reinforcer and, there- fore, is extinguished. Thus, discriminative stimuli are associated with the availability of the reinforcer. Establishing operations, on the other hand are associated with altering the value of the reinforcer (Michael, 1982).

Consider this example. The customer service division of an elec- tric utility is interested in turnaround time of customer requests for service. The customer service representatives track the number of days from request for service to meter turn on and thus have indi- vidual feedback mechanisms in place. The manager of the service representatives regularly receives data on the number of days tum- around time. Before any goal setting plan is implemented the super- visor verbally recognizes service representatives that achieve a turnaround time that she considers to be optimal. In addition, the service representatives have immediate feedback on their own tum- around time.’ Suppose that a goal setting intervention is then imple- mented with a goal of six days turnaround time. In this case, the addition of the goal does not make the reinforcers (supervisor rec- ognition and feedback on turnaround time) more available-the rein- forcers were available prior to the goal being set. Rather, the goal is likely to make the reinforcers more valuable. In the presence of a goal, supervisor recognition and feedback on goal achievement may be more reinforcing than they would be in the absence of the goal because of a history of goal achievement being paired with, signal- ing temporal proximity of or increased likelihood of other reinforc- ers. The “other” reinforcers in an organization might include pay raises, promotions, or access to preferred work tasks.

There are some instances where a goal is more appropriately

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described as a discriminative stimulus, and that is when reinforce- ment for the target response is available only in the presence of the goal and not in its absence. For example, consider a program in which a monetary bonus is introduced and made contingent on having an average turnaround time of six days or less. In such a circumstance the reinforcer (the monetary bonus) is available only in the presence of the goal and not in its absence. In this instance, the goal is best described as a discriminative stimulus. Alternative- ly, in those cases where reinforcers are more valuable in the pres- ence of goals, rather than more available, it seems more accurate to say that goals are functioning as establishing operations. It is also likely that goals may serve as both establishing operations and discriminative stimuli in many circumstances. As Michael (1993) so clearly points out, many environmental events have multiple stimulus functions.

This explanation of the function of goals more precisely explains the effectiveness of the popular intervention which combines goal setting and feedback. Clearly, feedback on performance in isolation may not function as a reinforcer. This fact is evidenced by the research reviewed by Locke (1980, p. 104) in which interventions using feedback alone (i.e., without goal setting) were not effective in improving performance. In contrast, interventions which used goal setting in conjunction with feedback were successful. If goals are considered establishing operations this consistent empirical finding is fully explained within a behavioral framework. As an EO, a goal serves to momentarily increase the reinforcing effectiveness of positive feedback, and evokes those behaviors which in the past have resulted in positive feedback. Returning to the turnaround time example, the goal of completing service requests in six days is an EO which establishes feedback indicating the achievement of the goal as a reinforcing stimulus. Further, the goal evokes behavior which in the past has resulted in the reinforcing stimulus-namely, completing requests within six days. It is not so much that feedback is more available in the presence of goal setting (suggestive of SD the explanation), rather, feedback is more valuable in the presence of goal setting (suggestive of the EO explanation).

Talk About the Way We Talk: Concept Narrafion and Development 13

EXAMPLE 2: TOP MANAGEMENT SUPPORT

The second example of the establishing operation is something generally referred to as “top management support” for organiza- tional change programs. This represents a more molar analysis than the previous example.

Any member of an organization (from the front line to the Chief Executive Officer) who has been involved in the implementation of an organization-wide change program, along with the consultants that attempt to spearhead such efforts, maintain that success is most likely if top management “supports” the program. Behavior ana- lysts agree that top management support is an important contributor to successfid organizational behavior change, but an explanation of its behavioral function is rarely discussed.

Before presenting a functional definition of top management support, a structural definition is called for. In the words of an employee in the midst of a change program: “The top guys have to let everyone know that this program is not going to go away-that it is not the ‘program de jour.’ They must communicate that this program is going to change the way we do business forever.” In addition to verbal communication, clients often report that they want to see top management “walking the walk” not just “talking the talk.” Going from business jargon to behavioral jargon, top management support seems to be a combination of clear and consis- tent verbal behavior in favor of the program and its permanence, and engaging in nonverbal behavior dictated by the program. For example, the verbal behavior might include the CEO kicking off the training for the new program with a short talk on the benefits of the program. The nonverbal behavior in an OBM intervention might include the CEO and his or her team being actively involved in recording and graphing behavior, and personally providing rein- forcement for behaviors consistent with the program and punish- ment for behaviors inconsistent with the program. Additional meth- ods for demonstrating support include allocating scarce hnds to the development and maintenance of the program, which might include the creation of in-house support systems to ensure program continu- ation.

Functionally, the class of behaviors called “top management

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support” has two antecedent effects. First, it probably has SD ef- fects in that it signals the availability of additional reinforcers (in particular reinforcers corning from top management itself) for be- haviors consistent with the program. Second, top management sup- port behavior has a general effect of altering the reinforcing and punishing values of all the stimuli associated with the program, and evoking behaviors (program compliance behaviors) which produce the reinforcers, and suppressing behaviors (non-compliance behav- iors that produce punishers or may be perceived to produce punish-

consequences associated with attending training, developing action plans, and evidence of building the new skills associated with the program. For example, consider the common intervention of requir- ing each employee to record and graph performance data. There are several potential consequences for such behavior. Top management may directly reinforce the behavior (positively or negatively). In addition, however, there are a number of more immediate natural consequences. Many of these consequences are neutral or negative. For example, taking time away from important work tasks to track and graph performance (often punishing), struggling to construct objective, reliable measurement tools (often punishing), seeing im- provement in performance (often neutral in the absence of other reinforcers), or discovering performance is not as good as was thought (often punishing). The effect of top management’s support behaviors (e.g., positive talk about the program, recording and graphing their own performance data, allocating resources to the program) may be to change the value of those more immediate consequences. Without top management support an individual may stop recording and graphing performance because of the negative consequences listed above. With top management support the time it takes to create objective, reliable measurement tools, and collect and graph performance data may change from being punishing to reinforcing in that the person is now demonstrating behaviors in compliance with the program. Further, performance improvement may change from being a neutral consequence to a reinforcer. In general, any evidence of complying with a program that is sup- ported by top management would take on reinforcing characteris- tics for those who have a history of being reinforced for engaging in

ers. 1 The stimuli, whose values are altered include such things as

Talk About the Way We Talk: Concept Narration and Development I S

behavior requested by their superiors. In most organizations, top management has control over many of the reinforcers for line em- ployees, supervisors and managers. Thus, top management’s ac- tions (verbal or nonverbal) are associated with powerful reinforcers and punishers such as pay raises, promotions, preferred work as- signments, budget allocation, the threat of being fired, or demotion. This association is probably responsible for the function-altering effects on other stimuli. All evidence of complying with the pro- gram is more valuable as reinforcement because it is now associated with other reinforcers.

Thus, top management support functions in at least two ways to change behavior. One is that such support means the availability of additional consequences, for appropriate behaviors. Thus, top man- agement support can serve as an SD. Second, top management support results in a change in the value of existing consequences, suggestive of an EO effect. Simply referring to top management support as having SD functions is an incomplete explanation in that it accounts for only part of the controlling consequences that result in successful organizational improvement programs.

EXAMPLE 3: CAREER DEVELOPMENT

In today’s world of flatter organizations, one of corporate Ameri- ca’s favorite rewards for good performance-the promotionis se- verely limited. With several layers of management being removed and replaced by self-managed teams of equal status, there are sim- ply fewer vertical promotions to be handed out. This poses a dilem- ma for upper level organizational managers who need employees to work harder than ever before, yet cannot reward hard work with a traditio~lly “successful” career marked by progressive promo- tions to greater positions of power and authority. Some organiza- tions k e dealing with this dilemma by attempting to manipulate establishing operations. Through career development programs they are attempting to persuade their employees to redefine what makes up a successful career. Rather than progressive vertical promotions, the programs preach the values of personal growth and learning that come fiom lateral moves within the organization. These lateral moves are often called “horizontal promotions”; the

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word “promotion” in this phrase being part of the attempt to make such a move reinforcing rather than punishing.

In essence the goal of such career development programs is to change the reinforcing value of horizontal promotions. In tradition- al organizations a horizontal promotion is often considered punish- ing. The implication is that performance was not good enough for a vertical promotion. In order to retain and motivate good employees in the new, flatter, organization the horizontal move must be per- ceived as a reward. The value of horizontal promotions is changed through training and literature which highlights the benefits of learning new skills, the personal satisfaction of new challenges and the increased marketability that comes from acquiring a wide vari- ety of skills and experiences. In addition, emphasis is placed on the harsh demands of the few high-level management jobs left and the difficulty of balancing such jobs with home and personal life. All of this “propaganda,” when successful, has the effect of making hori- zontal promotions into reinforcing events, and evoking behavior (e.g., working hard) which leads to these events. Thus, such career development programs provide a good example of the environmen- tal events that must be manipulated when creating an establishing operation for the purpose of maintaining andor improving orga- nizational performance. Successful programs that result in the change or maintenance of behavior cannot be accounted for com- pletely by the three-term contingency. The career development pro- paganda is not simply an SD. It does not signal the availability of reinforcers, the reinforcers (lateral moves and the associated events such as learning new skills) were always available. It represents changing the value of stimuli associated with the lateral move, in many cases from punishers to positive reinforcers.

As this example demonstrates, the EO concept is useful not just as an explanatory tool, it suggests alternative ways to achieve be- havior change in organizations. In addition to simply adding rein- forcers for appropriate behavior, altering EOs enables practitioners to influence appropriate behavior in existing contingencies. Be- cause one of the challenges in OBM application is increasing the total amount of positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior, attending to EOs provides an alternative to just adding reinforcers to the environment. Creative EOs can be used in combination with

Talk About the Way We Talk: Concept Narralioti ottd Developntenr 1 7

changes in SDs and consequences to increase the impact of orga- nizational interventions.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (a) to stimulate the use of the establishing operation as part of the vocabulary used during environmental analyses that precede development of OBM inter- ventions, (b) to stimulate use of the EO concept when explaining effects of complex OBM interventions, and (c) to prompt develop- ment of behaviorally sound and innovative performance improve- ment programs. Consideration andor manipulation of EOs may be important to ensure successful interventions. OBM researchers and practitioners always consider the reinforcing effectiveness of the consequent stimuli they use (e.g., “individualizing reinforcers” to ensure their effectiveness, using a variety of reinforcers to avoid satiation), and they often attempt to manipulate EOs (e.g., giving out tangible items that are rare, or hard to come by which makes those items more reinforcing), however they usually do not provide a behavioral explanation of what they have done. The establishing operation provides fimctional terminology for such explanations. In addition, the establishing operation implicates innovative new ave- nues for improving the effectiveness of our interventions. If a con- sequent stimulus is ineffective at changing behavior, the standard solution is to try another stimulus, however, a second option i s to manipulate the establishing operation for the initial consequent stimulus thereby making it more reinforcing. Further, interventions might include a plan for manipulating EOs in addition to the introduction of feedback and reinforcement. Given that organiza- tional behavior is multiply controlled, a multi-faceted approach to change provides the greatest likelihood for success.

To aid researchers and practitioners in considering the establishing opelation in their work, three general steps might help frame such consider;iton: (a) identi@ existing consequences for the desired behav- ior(s) that are cumntly not reinforcing (are either neuaal or punishing), but that could be reinforcing under the right circumstances, (b) identify the “circumstances” that would’alter the reinforcing value of the consequences and attempt to make the environmental manipulation

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to create those circumstances, and (c) in planning additional conse- quences to support desired behavior change, analyze the possibility of increasing the power of the consequences through manipulation of environmental events (e.g., deprivation, development of rules regard- ing the value of the reinforcer).

In summary, the establishing operation is an effective analytical tool which helps us look at organizational behavior management programs in the greater context in which they operate and enables us to investigate the possibility of maximizing the reinforcers avail- able, thus creating more effective organizational interventions.

NOTES

I . Other terms have been pro