Public Administration and Apply Behaviorist Theory to a Work Issue - Essay Example

Behaviorist Theory Behaviorist theory is considered as one of the important components of a person’s theory. The key components are the major aspects that provide a complete outlook on the behaviorist theory. This theory enables us to ascertain the way in which people react to a particular situation. It also helps them to arrive at a better decision by finding out the actual reason behind a particular problem. The key concepts of behaviorist theory include conditioned response, unconditional stimulus, aversive behavior, reinforcement and consequences.

Each of these concepts describes the change in a person’s behavior and the reason for such changes. The conditioned response relates to an activity that results due to a different incident. The next concept of behaviorist theory is aversive behavior. (Plaud, 1998). A person might exhibit a certain kind of behavior in response to a particular situation. This might be due to the disinterest towards the situation. Reinforcement aims at controlling the negative consequences of a behavior which helps in improving a person’s behavior.

Consequences are one among the most important concepts of the behaviorist theory. A consequence generally arises from a particular decision or an action. Consequences generally turn out to be positive or negative depending on the behavior of the person. (Dewey, 1999). The situation too plays a major role in deciding the consequence of an action. These key concepts are generally applied to almost all the problems in varied areas. But these concepts would perfectly suit an organization that deals with more number of problems and issues related to every single department of its.

When comparing the other problems, the issue relating to the company’s production. The most common issue is the decline in the quality of the product a company manufactures. The root causes for this problem is the lack of proper management, poor performance of the employees and inefficient decision making process. Analyzing these problems, it is evident that behavior of a person decides the outcome of a problem. To resolve an issue, an organization must incorporate unique strategies that would help the organization to improve the situation.

The behaviorist theory can be applied to the root causes of this problem as it would help the organization to resolve the problem in a much easier way. The key concepts like aversive behavior and consequences can be applied to the cause lack of efficient management. (Plaud, 1998). The possible outcome would be certainly positive as the disinterest or improper behavior will lead to problems like inefficient management. Poor performance is one of the prominent issues in most of the organizations and applying the concepts like conditioned response and consequence would improve this situation.

If this concept, conditioned response is applied to this cause, it would help the organization to improve the performance of the employees and this in turn will increase the level of production. This will automatically improve the quality of the products manufactured by the company. The next cause if the inefficient decision making that is done in most of the organizations. This can certainly be improved by applying the concept of unconditional stimulus. By applying these concepts to each of these root causes will enable the organization to eradicate the mentioned problems.

Reference Plaud, J. (1998). From Behavior Theory to Behavior Therapy. U.S.A: Allyn & Bacon. Dewey, E. (1999). Behavior Development. U.S.A: Columbia University Press.