Concept of Reinforcement in Organizational Behavior

Reinforcement is the attempt to develop or strengthen desirable behavior. There are two types of reinforcement in organizational behavior: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement strengthens and enhances behavior by the presentation of positive reinforcers. There are primary reinforcers and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers satisfy basic biological needs and include food and water. However, primary reinforcers don not always reinforce. For instance, food may not be a reinforcer to someone who has just completed a five course meal. Most behaviors in organizations are influenced by secondary reinforcers. These include such benefits as money, status, grades, trophies and praise from others. These include such benefits as money, status, grades, trophies and praise from others. These become positive reinforcers because of their associations with the primary reinforcers and hence are often called conditioned reinforcers. It should be noted that an event that functions as a positive reinforce at one time or in one Continue reading

Positive Impacts of Entrepreneurship on the Economy

As economies continue to integrate due to globalization and formally closed economies like India and China march toward total liberalization, entrepreneurship is on the increase. A close analysis of developed and industrialized economies indicates a common denominator that stands out amongst all of them. This is the most important role played by entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in such economies. This phenomenon has proved to us that if an economy is to develop fully, entrepreneurship should be allowed to flourish. Innovation Individuals often resort to entrepreneurship for one of the following reasons; they find a market niche and have the solution to profit from such niche; they have been unable to find suitable employment or a suitable means of income and therefore have resorted to using their creativity to generate an income for themselves; or they have the technological know-how and the financial resources (or able to source all of the above) Continue reading

People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM)

People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is a maturity framework that focuses on continuously improving the management and development of the human assets of a software or information systems organization. PCMM can be perceived as the application of the principles of Capability Maturity Model to human assets of a software organization. It describes an evolutionary improvement path from ad hoc, inconsistently performed practices, to a mature, disciplined, and continuously improving development of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of the workforce. Although the focus in People CMM is on software or information system organizations, the processes and practices are applicable for any organization that aims to improve the capability of its workforce. PCMM will be guiding and effective particularly for organizations whose core processes are knowledge intensive. The primary objective of the  People Capability Maturity Model is to improve the capability of the entire workforce. This can be defined as the level Continue reading

Case Study: Success Story of Google Search Engine

One of the most popular search engines is Google. Unknown to many, the term is coined by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of Edward Kasner who is an American Mathematician. The term is in reference with the number which is represented by the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The same utilization of the term reflects the mission of the company to deliver immense and infinite resources to be available online. The founders of the company, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were not in good terms back then when they met as graduate students of computer science in Stanford University in 1995. They used to argue on everything that they are discussing. The strong personalities always clashed. But eventually, they have found a common ground. The retrieving of various yet important information from massive set data has been the big challenge that they were up to at that time. So, on Continue reading

How to Manage Grapevine Communication in an Organization?

Grapevine  communication is an informal channel of business communication. It is called so because it stretches throughout the organization in all directions irrespective of the authority levels. Despite  existence  of  formal  channels  in  an  organization,  the  informal channels  tend  to  develop  when  he  interacts  with  other  people  in organization. It exists more at lower levels of organization. Grapevine generally develops due to various reasons. One of them is that when  an  organization  is  facing  recession,  the  employees  sense uncertainty. Also, at times employees do not have self-confidence due to which  they  form  unions.  Sometimes  the  managers  show  preferential treatment  and  favor  some  employees  giving  a  segregated  feeling  to other employees. Thus, when  employees sense a  need to  exchange their views,  they  go  for  grapevine  network  as  they  cannot  use  the  formal channel  of  communication  in  that  case.  Generally  during  breaks  in cafeteria,  the  subordinates  talk  about  their  superior’s  attitude  and Continue reading

File Organization Techniques

The basic technology of the data organization is based on a hierarchy. Data must be approached on an organized basis, if it is to be useful, in data processing, the hierarchy of data is described below:- A character is any simple number, alphabet or special symbol. A data record consists of a group of related data fields(e. g. Employee’s sequential record, customer record, etc.) A data field is an area that can hold one organization more characters that, together represents a specific data element(e. g. The name field, the quantity filed) A data file is a compilation of related data records maintained in some prearranged order. A database usually consists of several related organization integrated data files. A file consists of a number of records. Each record is made up of a number of fields and each field consists of a number of characters. In order to produce useful information Continue reading