The original sloppy behaviour at Athlone was caused by the Managers setting a bad example by allowing drinking at work and everyone being drunk and unfunctioning before lunchtime. If the person at the top is doing it – everyone else will do it too and model their behaviour on them. Also, the working conditions weren’t ideal in that they didn’t have any modern machines to carry out their work and the company relied on the employees to manually do everything. This left room for human error and bad behaviour to follow through.
HOW HAVE ATHLONE’S MANAGERS USED THE PROCESS OF SHAPING BEHAVIOUR
The new Managers used the process of shaping behaviour by reinforcing and giving continual feedback to the workers if they weren’t getting the message of the importance of quality. They took them to workshops to train them and rewarded them with bonuses to encourage continual good work or disciplined them if they weren’t performing as well as expected.
CAN YOU SEE ANY APPLICATION OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY IN THIS CASE …..DISCUSS
Social learning is modelling your behaviour on someone else. In this case, the original Managers were drinking on the job – so anyone underneath them would accept it as the norm. They were setting a bad example. When the new Managers came in they set up better working conditions where they took them to trade shows and taught them about the importance of quality. They also rewarded them with higher pay and bonuses, but also continually gave them feedback if they weren’t getting the message. They were disciplined or eventually fired if the work was not up to scratch or they were caught drinking on the job by their salaries getting deducted.
WOULD YOU EXPECT EMPLOYEES TO EXHIBIT HIGHER OR LOWER JOB SATISFACTION AFTER THE CHANGES THAN BEFORE
I would expect the employees to have a much higher job satisfaction after the changes, especially with the new Managers