Leadership and Cultural Change

Managing Future Well-Being

Ramona Houmanfar, Mark Mattaini, Ramona Houmanfar, Mark Mattaini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138560611
• eBook ISBN: 9781351360746
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Contemporary confluences of leadership decision-making and citizenship behavior often unintentionally contribute to the depletion of the world's resources – escalating health, education, and social crises, as well as community, societal, and cultural struggles – to adapt to emerging global shifts. Leadership and management practices in this context affect the wellbeing of organizational members (e.g., their safety, health, financial security, etc.) but also entail positive or negative impacts on consumer practices and collective community well-being (e.g., education, obesity, cancer, safe or green driving, energy conservation, diversity based health care, etc.).

Decision-making in most businesses and organizations is largely responsive to demands for short-term profit or cost minimization. On the consumer side, both cultural values and the corporate marketing practices that sustain them encourage high levels of consumption necessary to sustain corporate practices. In exploring the emerging applications of behavior science to these challenges, this book showcases emerging work by internationally recognized scholars on leadership and cultural change. The book will aid organizations and leaders in creating new models of stewardship, and will open opportunities for innovation while adapting and responding to growing social upheaval, technological advances, and environmental concerns, as well as crises in the global economy, health, education, and environment. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management.

Functions of Organizational Leaders in Cultural Change: Financial and Social Well-Being

RAMONA A. HOUMANFAR

MARK P. ALAVOSIUS

ZACHARY H. MORFORD

SCOTT A. HERBST

DANIEL REIMER

Social responsibility looms as a key feature of leadership decision making and citizenship behavior as the world’s resources are depleted, health and education crises increase, and communities, societies, and cultures adapt to a new context shaped by emerging technologies, political upheavals, global warming, and other drivers of behavior change. In this article we call for future work in behavior analysis, emphasizing the importance of organizational leaders’ decision-making behaviors in establishing organizational practices that support prosocial behavior and eliminate aversive conditions within cultural systems. The discussion expands on recent behavior analytic literature on cultural change and leadership behavior by first providing a summary of popular definitions of human well-being and relating this concept to prosocial behavior. By drawing upon these definitions, we then summarize the behavior analytic concepts of metacontingencies and macrocontingencies as a framework from which behavior analysts can continue work to promote prosocial behavior and human well-being writ large.

A plethora of books and articles describe the potential for a science of behavior to resolve larger societal issues. Skinner’s accounts of behavior in The Behavior of Organisms (1938) and Walden Two (1948) are notable, as these lay out the conceptual groundwork for cultural analyses and provide a description of a utopian community designed to promote and sustain residents’ well-being. Walden Two is a novel describing how the science of behavior could be applied to the design of communities and culture and reveals much about Skinner’s conception of a good life. Before the start of either of the first two journals in behavior analysis, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Skinner imagined the grander possibilities of this science. Skinner continued to write on this subject throughout his career, reiterating with a profound steadfastness the global outcomes to which this science can contribute (Skinner, 1948, 1953/1965, 1987, 1971/1990).

As a number of scholars in behavior analysis suggest (Alavosius & Mattaini, 2011; Alavosius, Newsome, Houmanfar, & Biglan, in press; Biglan, 2009; Biglan & Glenn, 2013; Glenn, 1988; Glenn & Malott, 2004; Houmanfar, Rodrigues, & Ward, 2010; Malott & Glenn, 2006; Mattaini, 2013), the science of behavior has reached a point where we can contribute to cultural change by supporting social actions by individuals in positions of power and creating behavioral technologies that promote human well-being. Socially significant leadership in this context not only relates to leaders’ actions and management practices that affect the well-being of organizational members (e.g., their safety, health, financial security) but also has a positive or negative impact on consumer practices and community well-being (e.g., education, obesity, cancer, safe or green driving, energy conservation, diversity-based health care). Social responsibility is not new ground for behavior analysts to consider. Wolf (1978) and Hawkins (1991) explore social validity and functional assessment of the societal importance of the goals, technologies, procedures, and impacts achieved by applications of behavior analysis. Their analyses consider the social validity of interventions applied to help special needs populations and provide a framework to consider the impact of behavior science on larger social issues. Many published research reports of applied behavior analysis across settings and populations include consideration of social validity. It has been a defining dimension of applied behavior analysis (Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968) since the start.

In this article we expand on recent behavior analytic literature on cultural change and leadership behavior by first providing a summary of popular definitions of human well-being and relating this concept to Biglan and Glenn’s (2013) notion of prosocial behavior. We then summarize the behavior analytic concepts of metacontingencies and macrocontingencies within the context of the obesity epidemic as a framework from which behavior analysts can continue work to promote prosocial behavior and human well-being writ large. We chose obesity as an example as the problem is global, involves consumptive behavior influenced by corporate actions, and is illustrative of problems requiring cultural change. Lastly, we call for future work in behavior analysis, emphasizing the importance of organizational leaders’ decision-making behaviors in establishing organizational practices that support prosocial behavior and eliminate aversive conditions within cultural systems.

WELL-BEING: A DEFINITION

Human well-being is admittedly a nebulous concept and relates to other words (e.g., happiness and prosperity) describing positive aspects of human existence. For example, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (n.d.) defines well-being as “the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous.” A number of national and international reports attempt to measure human well-being. Helliwell, Layard, and Sachs (2013) edited the most recent publication of the World Happiness Report, in which they summarize national happiness data from 156 countries, describe the benefits of well-being, and suggest the most significant detractors from human well-being (to which we refer later). Similarly, a Gallup (2014) report evaluates the well-being of all 50 U.S. states based on six criteria—life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and basic access. All six categories are measured via self-report. For example, life evaluation is measured by comparing one’s current life circumstances to what one expects to occur in 5 years, and emotional health is measured by asking questions regarding the quality of one’s daily experiences. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; 2013) describes guidelines for measuring subjective well-being, which is defined as “good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative, that people make of their lives, and the affective reactions of people to their experiences” (p. 29). Although this definition initially appears extremely vague, it can be broken down into behavior analytic concepts. The OECD goes on to clarify that the three defining elements of subjective well-being are life evaluation, affect, and eudaimonia. The first element, life evaluation, refers to both the term subjective and the reference to evaluations in the official definition. According to the OECD, life evaluations “capture a reflective assessment on a person’s life or some specific aspect of it” (p. 30). That is, they refer to one’s verbal behavior describing one’s experiences. A number of approaches in behavior analysis have focused on one’s evaluative life statements and how these might assess well-being. Wolf (1978) somewhat reluctantly includes self-evaluation in his discussion of social validity and acknowledges that these data are admittedly suspect but nevertheless important to evaluating behavior change efforts. Hawkins (1991) encourages more functional assessments by including the perspectives of significant others (family members, organizational members, community members, etc.) in determining whether behavior change is socially meaningful. Hawkins’s discussion expands Wolf’s perspective to invite input from important members of the client’s community and set the stage for even broader vantage points on measuring the benefits and costs of behavior change efforts.

Verbal reports of well-being are to be interpreted with caution, as perceptions of subjective experiences are difficult to anchor to objective measures of social benefit. Besides the difficulty in interpreting verbal reports as indicators of social well-being, language complicates behavior change efforts that might be used to advance cultural changes. The language we use to describe our behavior, goals, values, and more alters the motivating effects of consequences we might encounter. We do not respond to the contingencies alone; we also respond to the rules we use to describe those contingencies. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a behavior clinical treatment rooted in behavior analysis for situations in which one’s developed verbal repertoire prevents one from contacting, or interferes with, direct contingencies operating in the environment (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999). The primary focus of ACT is to eliminate the stimulus control of one’s verbal behavior over one’s nonverbal behavior such that one’s nonverbal behavior can interact directly, and effectively, with naturally occurring contingencies.

ACT studies specific to organizational settings have come about in the past decade and tend to be referred to as ACTraining because of differing populations and techniques (Bond, Hayes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2006; Hayes, Bunting, Herbst, Bond, & Barnes-Holmes, 2006). Research with ACTraining demonstrated the effectiveness of exercises that target values clarification, mindfulness, cognitive flexibility, and perspective taking. So these address behaviors important to more than a business’s bottom line by focusing on socially important behavioral events that when improved also aid the business. To date, ACTraining studies have improved mental health and innovation (Bond & Bunce, 2000); reduced stigma, stress, and burnout (Brinkborg, Michanek, Hesser, & Berglund, 2011; Hayes, Masuda, Bissett, & Guerrero, 2004); reduced absenteeism (Bond, Flaxman, & Bunce, 2008); and improved college performance (Chase et al., 2013).

The second element of subjective well-being, affect, is defined by the OECD as a person’s feelings, and as it contributes to human well-being, the OECD considers both positive and negative affect. Although this is a vague definition, feelings have been subjected to behavior analytic theoretical analyses. Layng (2006) distinguishes between emotions and emotional behavior. He discusses emotions as private events that indicate the operation of particular contingency arrangements. For example, the underlying contingency of one’s description of fear and anger is similar—distancing oneself from an event or object (Layng, 2006). The distinction between fear and anger then resides in the behavior that functions to produce that greater distance, even though the underlying contingency remains the same. Similarly, Layng (2006) argues that “basic ‘positive’ emotions may … be described as contingencies involving nearing relations … achieved by either bringing oneself closer to an event or object, or by bringing the event or object closer to the individual” (p. 158). Thus, if we consider affect from a behavior analytic perspective, we can define it as a private event indicative of particular sets of contingencies operating at any given point in time.

Eudaimonia, the last element of well-being, is defined as “a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological functioning” (Helliwell et al., 2013, p. 113). The OECD (2013) states that eudaimonia implies maximizing an individual’s potential while also admitting that eudaimonia is conceptually vague. Although even less clear than the other two concepts, eudaimonia might be thought of in two possible ways from a behavior analytic perspective: the relative absence of coercion and optimal freedom to choose. Behavior analysts have long written about the prevalence of coercive cultural systems and how they detract from human well-being (see Sidman, 1989; Skinner, 1987). As Sidman (1989) states, “Coercion is not the root of all evil, but until we adopt other than coercive ways to control each other’s conduct, no method of physically improving our species will keep our survival timer from running out” (p. ix). Choice, behavior analytically speaking, simply refers to situations in which organisms may allocate responding to one of multiple possible options (Fisher & Mazur, 1997). A limited number of behavior analytic studies have demonstrated that animals and humans prefer situations in which more options are available to those situations in which fewer options are available (Catania, 1975; Karsina, Thompson, & Rodriguez, 2011; Ono, 2000, 2004; Suzuki, 1997, 2000). However, others have shown that the presence of too many options tends to be less preferable (Schwartz, 2004) and that people tend to take longer to make decisions, or fail to make them at all, given too many options from which to choose. Thus, we argue that eudaimonia is related to optimal freedom to choose—that is, the point at which preference for a particular number of options is determined in relation to fewer options while response rate and response latency are not significantly impacted. In conclusion then, we can define boundaries that depict the level of human well-being in terms of the following:

1.One’s verbal behavior with respect to one’s other behavior and environment

2.The sets of direct acting contingencies operating in one’s environment

3.The level of coercive control in one’s environment

4.The degree to which individuals have an optimal level of choice

PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Biglan ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Leadership and Cultural Change
• 1. Functions of Organizational Leaders in Cultural Change: Financial and Social Well-Being
• 2. Leadership and Culture
• 3. Collective Leadership and Circles: Not Invented Here
• 4. Integrating Organizational-Cultural Values With Performance Management
• 5. Selection of Business Practices in the Midst of Evolving Complexity
• 6. Consumer Behavior Analysis and the Marketing Firm: Bilateral Contingency in the Context of Environmental Concern
• 7. Job Satisfaction: The Management Tool and Leadership Responsibility
• 8. Seven Life Lessons From Humanistic Behaviorism: How to Bring the Best Out of Yourself and Others
• 9. An Industry’s Call to Understand the Contingencies Involved in Process Safety: Normalization of Deviance
• 10. Leadership and Crew Resource Management in High-Reliability Organizations: A Competency Framework for Measuring Behaviors
• 11. Behavioral Education in the 21st Century
• 12. Cultural Change in a Medical School: A Data-Driven Management of Entropy
• 13. Enhancing the Behavioral Science Knowledge and Skills of 21st-Century Leaders in Academic Medicine and Science
• 14. Behavior Analytic Concepts and Change in a Large Metropolitan Research University: The Graduation Success Initiative
• 15. A Behavioral Approach to Organizational Change: Reinforcing Those Responsible for Facilitating the Climate and Hence Promoting Diversity
• Index