5 Learning and Creativity

1. 5 Learning and Creativity

2. Learning Objectives • Describe what learning is and why it is so important for all kinds of jobs and organizations • Understand how to effectively use reinforcement, extinction, and punishment to promote the learning of desired behaviors and curtail ineffective behaviors • Describe the conditions necessary to determine if vicarious learning has taken place

3. Learning Objectives • Appreciate the importance of self-control and self-efficacy for learning on your own • Describe how learning takes place continuously through creativity, the nature of the creative process, and the determinants of creativity • Understand what it means to be a learning organization

4. Continuous Learning • Why is continuous learning a necessity in today’s business environment? • Jeffrey Immelt, CEO General Electric • ‘Imaginative leaders are the ones who have the courage to fund new ideas, lead teams to discover better ideas, and lead people to take more educated risks.’

5. Learning in Organizations Learning is a relatively permanent change in knowledge or behavior that results from practice or experience • With learning comes change • Change must be relatively permanent • Learning takes place as a result of practice or through experience

6. Operant Conditioning Operant conditioning describes how learning takes place when the learner recognizes the connection between a behavior and its consequences

7. Exhibit 5.1 Operant Conditioning

8. Reinforcement in Operant Conditioning • The process by which the probability that a desired behavior will occur is increased by applying consequences that depend on the behavior in question • Step 1: identify desired behaviors to be encouraged • Step 2: decide how to reinforce the behavior

9. Learning Desired Behaviors Positive Reinforcement Negative Reinforcement

10. Positive Reinforcement • Increases the probability that a behavior will occur by administering positive consequences to employees who perform the behavior • Pay • Bonuses • Promotions • Job titles • Verbal praise • Awards

11. Reinforcement Schedules • Continuous • Partial • Fixed-interval • Variable-interval • Fixed-ratio • Variable-ratio

12. Shaping Shaping is the reinforcement of successive and closer approximations to a desired behavior • Powerful for complicated sequences • Gradual acquisition of skills

13. Discouraging Undesired Behaviors Extinction Punishment

14. Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment • Punishment reduces the probability of an undesired behavior • Negative reinforcement increases the probability of a desired behavior • Punishment involves administering a negative consequence when an undesired behavior occurs • Negative reinforcement entails removing a negative consequence when a desired behavior occurs

15. Organizational Behavior Modification Organizational behavior modification (OB MOD) is the systematic application of the principles of operant conditioning for teaching and managing organizational behavior

16. The Basic Steps of OB Mod • Identify the behavior to be learned • Measure the frequency of the behavior • Analyze antecedents and consequences • Intervene • Evaluate the performance improvement

17. Identify important organizational behavior Measure the frequency of the behavior Analyze antecedents and consequences Intervene Evaluate for performance improvement Problem solved? Exhibit 5.2 Steps in OB Mod No Yes Maintain

18. Measure Frequency of Behavior Before this day care center could correct the problem with employee tardiness, it had to gauge how frequently tardiness occurred.

19. Social Cognitive Theory • A learning theory that takes into account the fact that thoughts and feelings influence learning • Necessary components include • Vicarious learning • Self-control • Self-efficacy

20. Exhibit 5.4 Social Cognitive Theory Information Vicarious Learning Behavior Control Learner Self-Efficacy

21. Vicarious Learning • Learning that occurs when one person (the learner) learns a behavior by watching another person (the model) perform the behavior • Examples • Role playing • Demonstrations • Training films • Shadowing

22. Vicarious Learning Physicians learn vicariously by watching skilled physicians treat patients.

23. Conditions Required for Vicarious Learning • Learner observes the model when the model is performing the behavior • Learner accurately perceives model’s behavior • Learner must remember the behavior • Learner must have the skills and abilities to perform the behavior • Learner must see that the model receives reinforcement for the behavior in question

24. Use of Self-Control • Low-probability behavior • Available self-reinforcers • Goals determine self-reinforcement schedule • Reinforcement occurs upon goal achievement

25. Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy is a person’s belief about his or her ability to perform a particular behavior successfully

26. Sources of Self-Efficacy • Past performance • Vicarious experience • Verbal persuasion • Individuals’ readings of their internal physiological states

27. Learning by Doing • Experiential learning • Direct involvement in subject matter • Hands-on training

28. Exhibit 5.5 The Creative Process Recognition of a problem or opportunity Information gathering Production of creative ideas Selection of creative ideas Implementation of creative ideas

29. Exhibit 5.6 Determinants of Creativity

30. The Learning Organization Organizational Learning Knowledge Management

31. Central Activities in a Learning Organization • Encouragement of personal mastery or high self-efficacy • Development of complex schemas to understand work activities • Encouragement of learning in groups and teams • Communication of a shared vision for the organization as a whole • Encouragement of systematic thinking