1) Why do you think Rick was let go? How does reinforcement theory apply to this situation?
Answer:
After reading the case study there are certain reasons which demonstrated that Rick was not a let go. Ricks was a fresher and lacks experience. He joined the company because he knew that Mr. Peterson was into his work so far. He invested time in getting to know the plant and operations, meeting all employees and familiarizing himself with the problems in sales. Rick had saw some of the problems in the sales department and used his own logic to impress the Mr. Peterson and the management. He had started making changes here and there, Eg. he brought a computer and wanted to train to use computer in order to gain productivity which the managers didn’t like. He was aware that the company had a family culture associated here and it will take time to change the mind frame of the peoples working here. However he rounded off too fast and he thought that he could change the mentalities of the people easily by impressing them through new technology but it didn’t work. He did not have the experience so he got let go.
Reinforcement theory applies to this situation in that when Rick started to take initiatives to solve the gaps in the Sales department by implementing new technology there was a resistance to change which is a negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement had being with Val and Rick, when he had approached Mr. Peterson about bring in new technology had got a good response from him to continue with his work.
2) Explain Rosie and Walter’s reaction to Rick’s computer in terms of resistance to change. How might Rick have used the concepts in his Chapter to approach the computer situation so as to gain acceptance?
Answer:
Rick had discussed with Mr. Ball the prospect of using the centralized computer system to run word processing and spreadsheet software on terminals. Mr. Ball was alarmed about the security issue