Selection of Business Practices in the Midst of Evolving Complexity

I admire leaders who, with little experience and training, create organizations that make major contributions in their industries, especially given that a great number of businesses fail. Some fail spectacularly, in headline-grabbing fashion, but most failed businesses implode quietly. In the United States alone, half of small businesses do not survive beyond 5 years; each year more than 1 million file for bankruptcy, and another 1.5 million-plus await bankruptcy resolution. For an organization to survive, the recurring and nonrecurring interlocking behavior of the organization members must ultimately adapt to the complex and dynamic demands of the organization’s external environments. Based on an understanding of behavioral dynamics, this article offers a perspective on how leaders can identify realistic improvements inside their organizations and orchestrate their implementation to better adapt to the requirements of the external environment.     

Behavior Analytic Concepts and Change in a Large Metropolitan Research University: The Graduation Success Initiative

The Graduation Success Initiative is a complex, organization-wide application of behavior analytic concepts to improving undergraduate student retention and on-time graduation at a large metropolitan research university. The behavior analytic concepts discussed here include culture, supraorganismic phenomena, selecting environments, macrobehaviors, macrocontingencies, interlocking behavioral contingencies, metacontingencies, and rule-governed behavior. We introduce a change template that includes all pertinent agents in the university system and that focuses change efforts specifically on desired behaviors, targeted behaviors, strategic interventions, and reinforcing contingencies for each of the categories of agents. The Graduation Success Initiative produced a 16-point increase in on-time graduation in 4 years.     

The Mapping of Contingencies in Mental Models Found in Organizations

From a cognitive perspective, mental models held by individuals are thought to guide interactions with objects or systems, including interpersonal interactions. Frameworks that categorize types of interactions in organizations suggest that they are guided by cultures and mental models that range from the egoistic to the cosmos-centric. From a behavioral perspective, what the cognitive approach calls mental models are sets of verbal rules. Therefore, we suggest that behavior analysis could be used to reconceptualize the mental model literature, generating new research questions and more rigorous experimentation. Cognitive constructs such as more expansive mental models may simply be a function of an individual’s or group’s increased attention to interlocking contingencies. Applying behavioral interventions such as acceptance and commitment therapy could be a way to examine the utility of a behavior analytic approach.