Organizational behavior management (OBM) is a form of applied behavior analysis which applies psychological principles of organizational behavior and the experimental analysis of behavior to organizations to improve individual and group performance and worker safety. The areas of application may include: systems analysis, management, training, and performance improvement. OBM resembles human resource management, but places more emphasis on ABA and systems-level focus.
Contents
- History
- Journal of Organizational Behavior Management JOBM
- Scientific management
- Quality management
- References
Various OBM interventions have included working with therapists on increasing billable hours
OBM takes principles from many fields, including behavioral systems analysis and performance management, although there is some debate as to whether taking principles from fields outside of behavior analysis meshes within the definition of OBM. Related fields include behavior-based safety and behavioral engineering.
History
The history of this field is under some debate. Dr. Alyce Dickinson published an article in 2000 detailing the history of the field. The article states that the field emerged from within the field of behavior analysis. The first organized application of behavioral principles in business and industry was programmed instruction, however this application was before OBM emerged as a field. The first university to offer a graduate program in OBM and systems analysis was Western Michigan University. The first teacher to teach the course was Dr. Dick Malott.
Another early program in OBM was initiated at the University of Notre Dame in 1975 with the arrival of Martin Wikoff, the first graduate student in the program. Prior to attending Notre Dame, Wikoff, with University of Washington professors, Bob Kohlenberg (Psychology) and Terrance Mitchell (Foster School of Business) conducted one of the first controlled studies of applied behavior analysis in business; in this case, to improve Grocery Clerk performance. That study was presented at the 1976 MABA Convention in Chicago and the application to business was so novel, the research was assigned to the topic category of "Experimental Living Arrangements" confirming its status as one of the pioneering OBM documented applications. The Wikoff-Crowell-Anderson Notre Dame OBM research team was born.
Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM)
The first journal was published in 1977. The first editor was Aubrey Daniels. The name of the field originates from this journal publication. The field of OBM publishes a quarterly journal. This journal was ranked the third most influential of its kind in a 2003 study.
Upon a review of the articles by Nolan et al. (1999), It showed that:
- The top three topics are productivity and quality, customer satisfaction, and training and development.
- 95% of the articles published were experimental and 5% were correlation.
- 80% of the articles published were done in the field and 20% were done in the laboratory.
- The research question was 57% theoretical and 45% applied.
- The research method used most is a within subjects design.
Scientific management
OBM might be seen as one of the distant branches of scientific management, originally inspired by Taylor. The principal difference between scientific management and OBM might be on the conceptual underpinnings: OBM is based on B.F. Skinner's science of human behavior. Because different people behave differently in the same situation, studies from multiple disciplines using multiple research methods create confusion, hindering a unified concept of organizational behavior. For example, the Hawthorne Studies,where sociologists attempted to improve worker productivity by changing the lighting in the work space, they found that the productivity of the workers had improved just by being observed, not because of the improved lighting but because somebody was taking an interest in them. Yet, this study can also point to the social stage in Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, specifically the social need to belong
Quality management
The parallel between OBM tools and the process and procedures common to the so-called Quality Movement (SPC, Deming, Quality Circles, ISO, etc.) was documented by Wikoff in his ISPI Article of the Year, The quality movement meets performance technology, <Performance + Instruction,Volume 33, Issue 8, pages 41–45, September 1994>.