Behavior Management Theory

Behavior Management Theory

Rachel Chase

HA510: Organizational Development for Health Care

Professor Coppola

June 6, 2011

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Behavior Management Theory and how the writer can identify with this type of management theory. Steuben ARC, an organization that has adopted the behavior management theory and whether they were successful with this type of management will be discussed. The last topic addressed will be a scenario in which the writer is the director of Tri-County Home Health Agency and is faced with implementing a RIF (reduction in force). The writer is charged with deciding which jobs to eliminate, who is involved in the decision making process and how to notify the employees by using behavior management.

Behavior management theory

After the industrial revolution the United States began to develop many theories of management, one of them is the Human relations movement also referred to as the Behavior Management Theory (Dunn, 2010). Management principles developed during the classical period were simply not useful in dealing with many management situations and could not explain the behavior of individual employees. As Hartman identifies in his research “the principles of classical management theory were helpful in placing management objectives in the perspective of an organization; however, they failed to fulfill one of their earliest goals, i.e., providing management tools for dealing with organizational personnel challenges. In short, classical theory ignored employee motivation and behavior” (N.D.).

The behavior management theory was developed by a group of Harvard Business School researchers that conducted the Hawthorne studies. T.N. Whitehead, Elton Mayo, George Homans, Fritz Roethlisberger, and H.A. Simon were instrumental in conducting interviews with workers of the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company from 1924-1933 (Dunn, 2010). The studies included direct interviewing of...