Organizational behavior

1. LEARNING

2. LEARNING
Learning is any permanent change in behaviour of a
person that occurs as result of experience. It is accompanied
by acquisition of knowledge, skills & expertise which are
relatively permanent.

3. FEATURES OF LEARNING
1) Learning involves change in behaviour of a person :
The change may be good or bad from organisation’s point of view.
For example : bad habits, prejudice, etc may be learnt by an individual.
2) Change in behaviour must be relatively permanent :
To constitute learning, change should be relatively permanent.
Temporary changes may be only reflective and fail to represent any
learning . This rules out behavioural changes caused by fatigue or
drugs.

4. 3) The change in behaviour should occur as a result of
experience, practice or training:
It implies that behaviour caused from maturity, disease, or physical
damages does not constitute learning.
4) The practice or experience must be reinforced in order for
learning to occur:
If reinforcement does not accompany the practice or experience, the
behaviour will eventually disappear.
5) Learning is reflected in behaviour :
A change in an individual’s thought process or attitudes, not
accompanied by behaviour, is no learning.

5. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING
1) TRAINEE MUST BE MOTIVATED TO LEARN:
An employee must see a purpose in learning the information
presented & have a clear understanding of what is presented. If
these two factors are considered, there will be a greater chance of
satisfaction.
2) INFORMATION MUST BE MEANINGFUL :
The training material must relate to the purpose of the training
programme or it will stop being a motivator. The material should
be presented in a sequential manner & should provide variety to
prevent boredom & fatigue. Material can be presented through
case studies, lectures, films etc.

6. 3) Learning must be reinforced :
In organizations, both positive & negative reinforcements should
be used.If behaviour is undesirable, the negative reinforcement such
as denial of a pay raise, promotion or transfer can be effective.
However, during the orientation & training period, positive
reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement.
4) Organization of material :
Trainer must remember that well organised material will help
the trainees to remember the things taught to him. A
completeoutline of the whole course should be made with the main
topics included under each heading. The training material should be
distributed among trainees
well in advance so that they may come prepared in the lectures,
understand operations quickly & remove their doubts by asking
questions from the instructor.

7. 5) FEEDBACK ON LEARNING :
People like to know how much they have learnt &
how well they are doing. The sooner employees
know the results of a quiz test, the sooner they can
assess their progress.
Self graded tests & programmed learning kits provide
the necessary feedback to a person on his progress
on a particular subject.

8. THEORIES OF LEARNING
There are 4 theories which explain how individuals
learn new patters of behaviour :

10. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
• Classical Conditioning deals with the
association of one event with another
desired event resulting in a desired
behaviour or learning.
• Classical conditioning was given by Ivan
Pavlov, a famed Nobel prize winning
physiologist.

11. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
Pavlov conducted an experiment on a dog to study the relation
between the dog’s salivation & ringing of a bell. When he
presented a piece of meat to the dog, he noticed a great deal of
salivation. He called the food as unconditioned response. During
the second stage, he merely rang the bell, but the dog did not
salivate in response to ringing of the bell. He subsequently
introduced the sound of the bell each time the meat was given to
the dog. Thus, eventually the dog learnt to salivate in response to
the ringing of the bell even when there was no meat. This is how
Pavlov conditioned the dog to respond to a learned stimulus.

13. OPERANT CONDITIONING
Operant conditioning is based on the work of B.F.
Skinner. It is based on the premise that behaviour is a
function of its consequences.
Individuals emit responses that are rewarded & will
not emit responses that are either not rewarded or
are punished. Behaviour is likely to be repeated if
the responses are favourable & it is not likely to be
repeated if the consequeces are unfavourable.

14. OPERANT CONDITIONING
Operant conditioning is a powerful tool for people in the
organisations. Most behaviours in organisations are
learned, controlled & altered by consequences.
Management can use this process to control & influence
the behaviour of employees by manipulating the
reward system. Thus, behavioural consequences that
are rewarding increase the rate of response , while
the aversive consequences decrease the rate of
response.

15. COGNITIVE LEARNING
Cognition refers to an individual’s ideas, thoughts, knowledge, interpretations,
understandings, etc about himself & his environment.
The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior
and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of
events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors.

16. SOCIAL LEARNING
• Social learning theory is extension of operant
conditioning
• The view that we can learn through both
observation and direct experience is called social
learning

17. SHAPING BEHAVIOUR
In any organisation, managers are concerned
with making then subordinates learn those
behaviours that are most beneficial to the
organisation. When a manager moulds
individuals by guiding their learning, he is
shaping behaviour.

18. SHAPING BEHAVIOUR
THE LAW OF EFFECT:
The operant conditioning is based on the law of effect
propounded by Thorndike. The law states that the
behaviour that has rewarding consequence is likely to be
repeated, whereas the behaviour that leads to negative
consequences tends not to be repeated.
Example : If Employees work hard to achieve organizational
objectives & are directly rewarded with bonus , they will
tend to repeat their efforts when new objectives are set.

20. STRATEGIES OF REINFORCEMENT
Reinforcement may be defined as anything that both
increases the strength of response and tends to
induce repetitions of the behaviour that preceded the
reinforcement.

22. Positive reinforcement is a reward or other desirable
consequence that follows a particular behaviour or activity. Its
used to increase the frequency of action or behaviour.

24. Negative reinforcement takes place when
individuals learn to escape or avoid from unpleasant
consequences.
For example : people learn to drive carefully to avoid
accidents.

25. PUNISHMENT
Punishment is a means of reducing a desired behavior
by introducing a potentially undesirable
consequence. For e.g. salary cuts, termination, loss
of privileges and layoffs.

26. EXTINCTION
Extinction is an effective method of controlling undesirable behaviour. It
is based on the principle that if a response is not reinforced, it will
eventually disappear.
For example : A disruptive employee who fights & is punished by the
supervisor for doing so may continue the disruptions because of the
attention they bring. By ignoring the employee, attention is withheld &
also the motivation for fighting.