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6
LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER SCAN
This chapter is the second chapter on learning and behavior, but examines external influences
on behavior and their relationship to performance. Learning in organizations is facilitated
through reward, punishment, and extinction. In addition, Bandura's social learning theory
describes how individuals model their behavior after others. The challenge in examining the
performance of an individual is in finding accurate tools of measurement. Goal-setting
programs provide one avenue for the link between effort and achievement. Strategies for
rewarding behavior and for dealing with poor behavior are provided.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1. Define learning, reinforcement, punishment, extinction, and goal setting.
2. Distinguish between classical and operant conditioning.
3. Explain the use of positive and negative consequences of behavior in strategies of
reinforcement and punishment.
4. Identify the purposes of goal setting and five characteristics of effective goals.
5. Describe effective strategies for giving and receiving performance feedback.
6. Compare individual and team-oriented reward systems.
7. Describe strategies for correcting poor performance.
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KEY TERMS
The following key terms are introduced in Chapter 6.
learning
classical conditioning
operant conditioning
positive consequences
negative consequences
reinforcement
punishment
extinction
self-efficacy
goal getting
management by objectives (MBO)
performance appraisal
consensus
distinctiveness
consistency
mentoring
THE CHAPTER SUMMARIZED
I.
THINKING AHEAD: Motivation, Goals, and the Consequences of Behavior
II.
LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS
This chapter also addresses motivation and behavior. The difference between the previous
chapter on motivation is that this chapter focuses on the external causes of behavior.
Learning and motivation are related because learning changes behavior as it is acquired through
experience. Henry Ford once said, "anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or
eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind
young."
A.
Classical Conditioning
The first theory of learning has a long history, dating back to the early 1900s.
Classical conditioning is pairing an unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned
stimulus to elicit an unconditional response. Most students have heard of Pavlov's
research with dogs. They may not be aware that the collaborative efforts between the
Russian scientist and Walter Cannon lead to the application of the ideas in the U.S.
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B.
Operant Conditioning
The second class of learning uses positive or negative consequences for modification of
behavior. Operant conditioning is based on the notion that behavior is a function of its
consequences.
C.
The Strategies of Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction
1.
Reinforcement
Both positive and negative consequences are related to reinforcement. Positive
consequences are results of a behavior that is pleasurable. In contrast, negative
consequences are results that individuals find unattractive or aversive. Schedules
for reinforcement are either continuous or intermittent. Intermittent schedules can
be fixed or variable ratio, or fixed or variable interval.
2.
Punishment
There are two approaches to punishment, or the elimination of undesirable
behavior. Either negative consequences or withholding positive consequences
can result in similar outcomes.
3.
Extinction
Extinction is the attempt to weaken a behavior by attaching no consequences
to it. Extinction is most successful if combined with positive reinforcement.
D.
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
Bandura’s social learning theory adds a component of interaction as a learning
approach. This theory states that people learn by modeling their behavior through the
observation of others. Bandura’s theory also emphasizes the importance of selfefficacy, or the belief in one’s capability regarding a particular task, as a positive force
for learning.
E.
Learning and Personality Differences
Not all approaches are appropriate for all personalities. For example, introverts perform
better with quiet, concentrated periods of time, while extraverted individuals need to
express and exchange ideas with others.
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III.
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GOAL SETTING AT WORK
The process of establishing desired results that guide and direct behavior is goal setting.
A.
Characteristics of Effective Goals
To be effective, goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timebound.
B.
Increasing Work Motivation and Task Performance
Goals can be used to increase performance, since studies have indicated that challenging
goals, result in higher performance. The three behavioral aspects of enhancing
performance motivation through goal setting are employee participation, supervisory
commitment, and useful performance feedback.
C.
Reducing Role Stress of Conflicting and Confusing Expectations
Goal setting reduces stress by clarifying the task-role expectations. This may be
atttributable to improved communication between supervisor and employees.
D.
Improving the Accuracy and Validity of Performance Evaluation
The third major function of goal setting is to improve the accuracy and validity of
performance evaluation. One of the best known methods is management by objectives,
(MBO), which is a goal setting program based on interaction and negotiation between
employees and managers.
IV.
PERFORMANCE: A KEY CONSTRUCT
Performance is closely associated with the concept of task accomplishment, which is an
extension of the scientific management school. Performance appraisal is the evaluation of
a person's performance.
A.
Defining Performance
Performance must be clearly defined and understood by the employers who are
expected to perform well at work. Performance in most lines of work is
multidimensional. Defining performance is a prerequisite to measuring and
evaluating performance on the job.
B.
Measuring Performance
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The optimal situation is to have the measurements of performance assess actual
performance. This is difficult because of our level of refinement of performance
appraisal tools. Performance appraisal systems should include an analysis of reliability
and validity of the instrument chosen for measurement.
C.
Performance Feedback: A Communication Challenge
An equally difficult problem with the measurement of the actual performance is the
challenge of communicating perceptions of performance to the employees, which is
referred to as performance feedback.
D.
Developing People and Enhancing Careers
The most important aspect of performance appraisal is the continual development of the
employee. Unfortunately, too many appraisals are used singularly for salary decisions,
and only provided once a year, begrudgingly. Dr. Deming, a leader in the quality
movement, advocates the elimination of performance feedback, in part because of our
misuse of the concept.
E.
Key Characteristics of an Effective Appraisal System
There are five characteristics related to effectiveness of performance appraisal—validity,
reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, and equity.
V.
REWARDING PERFORMANCE
A.
A Key Organizational Decision Process
Individuals observe closely how others are treated in reward and punishment
decisions. This affects the organizational culture, as well as the motivation and
performance of others.
B.
Individual versus Team Reward Systems
The United States scores high on Hofstede's individualism scale, yet there is an increase
in the degree of team effort. Many organizations are conscious of the competition
between individual rewards and group efforts.
C.
The Power of Earning
When there is little relationship between performance and rewards, people often begin to
believe that they are entitled to rewards regardless of how they perform, through the
concept of entitlement.
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VI.
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CORRECTING POOR PERFORMANCE
If poor performance is not attributable to work design or organizational process problems,
then attention should be focused on the employee. The problem may lie in (1) some aspect of
the person's relationship to the organization or supervisor, (2) some area of the employee's
personal life, or (3) a training or developmental deficiency.
A.
Attribution and Performance Management
Attribution is related to performance measurement because supervisors attribute behavior and
performance to either internal or external causes.
Kelley proposed that individuals make attributions based on information gathered in
the form of three informational cues: consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency.
Consensus is the extent to which peers in the same situation behave the same way.
Distinctiveness is the degree to which the person behaves the same way in other
situations. Consistency refers to the frequency of a particular behavior over time.
B.
Coaching, Counseling, and Mentoring
Two of the mentoring responsibilities for supervisors are coaching and counseling.
Mentoring is a relationship that encourages development and career enhancement for
people moving through the career cycle.
VII.
MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IS A KEY
TASK
VIII.
LOOKING BACK: Oprah's Rewards and Recognition for Successful Performance
CHAPTER SUMMARY







Learning is a change in behavior acquired through experience.
The operant conditioning approach to learning states that behavior is a function of its
positive and negative consequences.
Reinforcement is used to develop desirable behavior; punishment and extinction are used
to decrease undesirable behavior.
Bandura's social learning theory suggests that self-efficacy is important to effective
learning.
Goal setting improves work motivation and task performance, reduces role stress, and
improves the accuracy and validity of performance appraisal.
Performance appraisals help organizations develop employees and make decisions about
them.
Making accurate attributions about the behavior of others is an essential prerequisite to
correcting poor performance.
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High-quality performance should be rewarded and poor performance should be corrected.
Mentoring is a relationship for encouraging development and career enhancement for
people moving through the career cycle.
REVIEW QUESTIONS: SUGGESTED ANSWERS
1. Define the terms learning, reinforcement, punishment, and extinction.
Learning is a change in behavior acquired through experience. Reinforcement is the bestowing
of positive consequences or withholding of negative consequences to develop desired behavior.
Punishment, in contrast, bestows negative or positive consequences to eliminate or weaken
undesirable behavior. Extinction is the attempt to weaken a behavior by attaching no
consequences to it.
2. What are positive and negative consequences in shaping behavior and how should they be
managed? Explain the value of extinction as a strategy.
Managers have access to useful positive and negative reinforcement strategies to assist
employees in their pursuit of goals in the workplace. Extinction is an appropriate strategy for
situations that require patience and time. It is useful in situations needing positive reinforcement
of desired behaviors. Extinction is a low intrusion approach to behavior modification.
3. How can self-efficacy be enhanced? What are the differences in the way introverted and
extraverted and intuitive and sensing people learn?
Self-efficacy can be enhanced through (1) performance accomplishments, (2) vicarious
experiences, (3) verbal persuasion, or (4) emotional arousal. Introverts need quiet time to study,
concentrate, and reflect on what they are learning. They think best when they are alone.
Extraverts need to interact with other people, learning through the process of expressing and
exchanging ideas with others. An intuitive thinker may want to skim research reports about
implementing total quality programs and then, based on hunches, decide how to apply the
research findings to the organization. A sensing feeler may prefer viewing videotaped interviews
with people in company that implemented total quality programs and then identify people in the
organization most likely to be receptive to the approaches presented.
4. What are the five characteristics of well-developed goals? Why is feedback on goal
progress important?
Well-developed goals are specific, challenging, measurable, time-bound, and prioritized.
Goal acceptance is thought to lead to goal commitment and then to goal accomplishment.
Feedback helps employees assess how well their efforts are leading to goal accomplishment.
5. What are the purposes of conducting performance appraisals? Who should appraise
performance? Why?
Chapter 6: Learning and Performance Management
Accurate appraisals help supervisors fulfill their dual roles as evaluators and coaches. The
major functions of performance appraisals are to give employees feedback on performance,
to identify the employees' developmental needs, to make promotion and reward decisions, to
make demotion and termination decisions, and to develop information about the
organization's selection and placement decisions. Multiple sources of appraisal data should
be used: supervisor, self, peers, and employees.
6. What are the two possible attributions of poor performance? What are the implications
of each?
Poor performance may be attributed to the person or the situation. If poor performance is
attributed to the person, interventions such as training, counseling, or disciplinary action may
be appropriate. If poor performance is attributed to the situation, an intervention designed to
remove situational constraints on performance may be appropriate.
7. How can supervisors best provide useful performance feedback?
Feedback should be specific and based on deserved behavior. The behavior in question
should be controllable by the individual, and both leader and follower should have ample
time to prepare for the feedback session.
8. How do mentors and peers help people develop and enhance their careers?
Both provide information sharing, career strategizing, job-related feedback, emotional
support, and friendship. The key in both mentor and peer relationships is mutual trust.
DISCUSSION AND COMMUNICATION QUESTIONS: SUGGESTED ANSWERS
1. Which learning approach—the behavioral approach or Bandura's social learning theory—
do you find more appropriate for people?
This answer may have to do with how much importance students place on the self-efficacy
aspect of the Bandura theory. It is obviously a more complex set of dynamics for
consideration. Students can be encouraged to consider the type of learning (e.g., level of
complexity) as another variable.
2. Given your personality type, how do you learn best? Do you miss learning some things
because of how they are taught?
Students will often be able to determine what they don't like about learning opportunities, as
opposed to knowing how they would learn more comfortably. It is interesting to ask students
if they were graded through group grades completely, would this change their view of
individual studying and learning? Many college classes are taught by NTs, who use a
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particular style. Have students discuss what the NT teaching/learning style is, and how it
affects other learning styles.
3. What goals do you set for yourself in your work and personal life? Will you know if you
achieve them?
Encourage students to discuss this question beyond the obvious, "complete a business
degree." They can evaluate their goals using the characteristics of effective goals, and
discuss how they get feedback on the goal progress.
4. If there were a conflict between your self-evaluation and the evaluation given to you by
your supervisor or instructor, how would you respond? What, specifically, would you do?
What have you learned from your supervisor or instructor during the last reporting period?
The key is to gather as much information as possible about the other's position. A key in
approaching differing views is preparation. Suggest students should respond only after
thinking through the information for a day or so. Students can use their knowledge of the
perceptual process to analyze this question.
5. What rewards are most important to you? How hard are you willing to work to receive
them?
Encourage students to develop a gradual rating of the rewards. Not all of the reward are
necessarily worth the cost. They may have some ethical issues related to high performers.
The alternative experiential exercise at the end of Chapter 9 (in this manual), Who Works
Saturday Night, compares rewards and how badly individuals want rewards versus balance in
their lives.
6. Prepare a memo detailing the consequences of behavior in your work or university
environment (e.g., grades, awards, suspensions, and scholarships). Include in your memo
your classification of these consequences as positive or negative. Should your organization
or university change how it applies these consequences?
In response to the final question (Should your organization or university change how it
applies these consequences?) students should provide support, based on material from the
chapter, for why changes should or should not occur.
7. Develop an oral presentation about the most current management practices in employee
rewards and performance management. Find out what at least four different companies are
doing in this area. Be prepared to discuss their fit with the text materials.
Based on the fit between current management practices identified and text materials, students
can discuss how successful they believe the various management practices will be.
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7. Interview a manager or supervisor who is responsible for completing performance
appraisals on people at work. Ask the manager which aspects of performance appraisal
and the performance appraisal interview process are most difficult, and how he or she
manages
these difficulties. Include the aspects of his or her job enable the manager to meet these
three different needs.
This is also a good opportunity for students to share experiences (both positive and negative)
that they have had as employees being appraised. The contrasting perspectives of the
managers/supervisors and the students (as employees) should provide for some interesting
discussion.
ETHICS QUESTIONS: SUGGESTED ANSWERS
1. Suppose a team of behavioral experts was asked to enhance the motivation of military
personnel to kill their enemy: Is this request ethical? Is it socially desirable? Should the
team have accepted the assignment? Explain.
The dilemma should be confronted long before the action, and upon entering the
organization, the task should be presented so that individuals with moral principal
disagreements with the task would have an option to reject the assignment.
2. Suppose the organization you work for simply assigns employees their task goals without
consulting them. Is there an ethical problem with this approach? Does the organization
have to consult its employees?
The obvious drawback is that individuals may lack loyalty and autonomy that will affect their
performance, productivity, and task significance. It is a poor leadership and management
strategy, but is not patently unethical. The managerial problem is that people who are
assigned goals lack goal commitment, and may be unwilling to put forth the necessary effort
to achieve the goal.
3. Assume you are an experienced technical employee with a better understanding of your
work than your supervisor has. Further assume that your supervisor sets such high
performance standards for an inexperienced coworker that the person cannot ever meet them
and therefore is fired. What should you do? Is your supervisor's action ethical? Explain.
The action is unethical if the supervisor is aware that the new employee cannot fulfill the
expectations. However, it appears that the supervisor needs to be exposed to the degree of
difficulty, which you could do diplomatically.
4. Suppose your company announced that it would pay bonuses to employees who met a certain
performance standard. The company did not realize, however, that many employees would be
able to reach the standard with hard work and that the bonuses would cost the company much
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more than expected. Is it fair to lower the bonus rate? Is it fair to increase the performance
standard for bonuses after the fact? Explain.
The time of reference is important to the situation. For example, if a company cannot pay its
bills at the end of the year, and layoffs are inevitable, that is different than reneging on a shortterm promise. Students should be encouraged to examine the issue from both the individual and
the organizational perspectives.
CHALLENGES
6.1 CORRECTING POOR PERFORMANCE
As students list contributing factors to their poor performance, it is important that they consider
internal as well as external factors. As a follow-up to this challenge, students might be asked to
summarize how effective their plan was once implemented.
EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES
6.1 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
Instructor's Notes:
The purpose of this exercise is to illustrate the effects of positive and negative reinforcement on
behavior change. This exercise is useful when a class seems unruly and needs a change of pace.
It is similar to the childhood game most students have played. Students will become very vocal
and typically animated. You may want to take care in selecting the volunteers.
Discussion Questions:

What were the differences in behavior of the volunteers when different kinds of
reinforcement (positive, negative, or both) were used?
Most of the time the individual receiving positive reinforcement will have a number of
gestures and nonverbal indicators of success.

What were the emotional reactions of the volunteers to the different kinds of reinforcement?
One of the ways to give the volunteers time to reflect and to get out of the spotlight for a
moment is to have them go to a board or flip chart and list a series of words that described
how they felt. Typical for volunteer #2 will be embarrassment, frustration, quit, etc.
Volunteer #3 may have feelings like confusion, frustration, and ambiguity.

Which type of reinforcement—positive or negative—is most common in organizations?
What effect do you think this has on motivation and productivity?
Students' responses will depend on their exposure to specific instances.
Chapter 6: Learning and Performance Management
6.2 CORRECTING POOR PERFORMANCE
Role Descriptions
Assistant Director, Academic Computing Service Center
You are the assistant director of the university's Academic Computing Service Center. You
are a skilled information systems software engineer with twenty years of experience at two
different universities. You assumed your current job about three years ago. Within the first
year you became very familiar with all of the information systems infrastructure at the
university and developed a highly successful relationship with all of the technicians and
support staff under your supervision.
With a notable downturn in enrollment since you came, it has been a struggle to obtain the
financial resources necessary to complete all of the upgrades you think are required for a first
rate center and to procure all the latest hardware sought by the faculty, research, and teaching
staff across campus. The center services a wide variety of university customers, such as the
hard science requirements in engineering, physics, and chemistry for massive data analysis
and networking with other universities; the social science requirements in psychology,
business, and social work for specific types of statistical analysis packages; the administrative
requirements of the registrar and financial services offices; and finally the unique needs of the
medical school. Because of the differing needs of these customers, the center experiences
conflicting pressures and demands. These customers are not information systems experts,
and you take a lead role in attempting to educate them about the competing demands and
limitations the center faces.
You report directly to the new director of the ACS Center who has been on the job for about
seven months. Although the director appears friendly, she also does not seem to be a real
information systems expert with the technical expertise you would like a director to have.
You are scheduled to meet with a university committee of faculty and staff, although you are
not exactly sure why, though you have heard rumors there is some discontent among the
center's customers.
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Role Descriptions
University Committee Members
You are members of a university committee of faculty and staff that the new director of the
Academic Computing Service Center has asked the president to form. You understand that
the new director is a rather new graduate of an eastern university with an M.S. degree in
information systems and some prior computing and information systems experience prior to
going back to graduate school. She has been the director for about seven months, and
declines in enrollment which preceded her arrival by several years have taken a toll on the
financial and human resources of the university at the same time advances in information
systems technology have increased demand for system upgrades and advances across campus.
The assistant director of the ACS Center has been in the vice of these forces for several years.
The assistant director is a talented, highly proficient information systems expert who grew up
through the technical ranks after getting an undergraduate business degree in information
systems and management science. His technically superior attitude is apparently evident to
the diverse disciplines across campus who see him as increasing the tensions and conflicts
flowing from declining resources and increasing demand. The new director seems a little
puzzled as to hot to sort out all the issues and make appropriate attributions as to the behavior
and actions of the various parties involved. A key responsibility for her is getting a clear
picture of the performance of her assistant director, who does seem to have some poor
performance problems.
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ALTERNATIVE EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
THE DEATH OF MANAGEMENT
Instructor's Notes:
Since this is an editorial page, this is a logical assignment for students to read as homework. A
technique that works to aid in getting to the issues quickly in class is to have the students
highlight the most important issues for their position.
In class, divide into five groups that will discuss this topic with the speaker when he visits
campus. Each group will submit, within 20 minutes, what their issue and discussion question
will be, and who is their designated debater. The instructor takes the position of the editorial
writer, Robert Samuelson. (You may want to let 5 students take his position, and debate for
him). During the debate students may request assistance from their group, and they will need to
reference the book for their support.
(1) decide who in your group will be the 5 students to debate this topic
(2) decide which particular point you wish to refute
(3) back up you argument with specific references to this chapter
(4) prepare your group by defining what you believe Samuelson means by the following words:
pseudo skills
all-purpose executives
general managers
skills
(5) What would Mr. Samuelson say about the concepts in this chapter?
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THE DEATH OF MANAGEMENT
Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, May 10, 1993, 55.
We are now witnessing the death of management. By management, I mean the
peculiarly American idea (still taught at many business schools) that a "good manager"
should be able to manage any enterprise, anywhere, any time. Through incisive analysis and
decisive action, our supermanagers supposedly could make any company productive and
profitable. The idea has collapsed with failures at companies that once symbolized U.S.
management prowess: Sears, Westinghouse, and IBM.
With hindsight, we can see the absurdity. We don't imagine a winning football coach
switching to basketball, nor a concert pianist becoming a symphony violinist. We don't think
an orthopedic surgeon would automatically make a good psychiatrist. We recognize that
differences in talent, temperament, knowledge and experience make some people good at
some things and not at others. Somehow, managers were supposed to be immune to this
logic.
They aren't, of course. Indeed, the people who have created great businesses in recent
decades typically confirm the logic. They have not been all-purpose executives, casually
changing jobs and succeeding on the strength of dazzling analysis. Instead, they have been
semi-fanatics who doggedly pursued a few good ideas. People like Sam Walton (Wal-Mart),
Ray Kroc (McDonald's), William McGowan (MCI) and Bill Gates (Microsoft).
What seems astonishing is how such a bad idea survived so long. Our infatuation
with it partly reflected American's optimism that all problems are amenable to reason. In
1914, Frederick Winslow Taylor's "The Principles of Scientific Management" appeared and
set a tone. Taylor pioneered time-and-motion studies, which analyzed how specific jobs
might be done more efficiently. But his larger purpose was to "prove that the best
management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws..."
Up to a point, who can quarrel with the resort to reason? The trouble is that it was
taken too far and became self-destructive. The problem was not that freelance managers
constantly jumped between companies, although that happened. The problem was that the
style of running big companies changed for the worse. The belief that all problems could be
solved by analysis favored the rise of executives who were adept with numbers and making
slick presentations. Huge staffs of analysts served these executives, who created
conglomerates on the theory that a good manager could manage anything.
With bigger bureaucracies, companies couldn't respond quickly to market changes new technologies, competitors or customer needs. The more powerful top executives
became, the less they knew. Their information was filtered through staff reports and
statistical tables. Some executives developed what consultant Mel Stuckey calls a phobia of
manufacturing: they didn't know what happened in factories and feared exposing their
ignorance.
Roger Smith, GM's chairman between 1981 and 1990, exemplified this sort of knownothing executive. When asked by Fortune to explain what went wrong, he answered, "I
don't know. It's a mysterious thing." To fathom what went wrong, Smith truly had to
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understand how automobiles are designed and made; he apparently never did, despite a career
at GM. As a society, we have spent the past decade paying for mistakes like Smith's. Inept
management, though not the only cause of corporate, turmoil, has been a major contributor.
"Downsizing" and "restructuring" are but the catch phrases for the harsh process by which
companies seek to regain their edge.
Truly dead? Consider General Electric. A decade ago, it was "choking on its nitpicking systems of formal reviews...which delayed decisions...and often made GE a laggard
at bringing new products to market," write Noel Tichy and Stratford Sherman in a new book.
The "mastery of arduous procedures had become an art form" necessary for executive
advancement. GE chairman John Welch Jr. fired thousands and sold 19 major businesses.
Profits rose from $1.7 billion in 1981 to $4.7 billion in 1992, but GE's payroll shrank from
404,000 to 268,000.
Such have been the ultimate social consequences of a bad idea. But is the muddled
notion of "management" truly dead? You can object on two grounds. First, some generalists
still ascend to the top of big companies, the naming of Louis Gerstner - who knows little of
computers - to head IBM is a case in point. Well, maybe. But these executives are often
specialists of a different sort; they specialize in dismantling conglomerates or top-heavy
bureaucracies. Welch played precisely this role at GE; and Christopher Steffen intended to
do the same at Kodak.
The second objective is more serious: it is that business schools still aim to produce
general managers. The present notion of the M.B.A. (Master of Business Administration) is
foolish. It is impossible to take people in their mid-20s - without much business experience and educate them as "managers.” Yet business schools cling to the notion, because to do
otherwise would jeopardize their tuition revenues. What's lost is the opportunity for these
bright young people to learn something of value - a specific business, a foreign language, an
engineering skill - instead of the pseudo skills taught in business school.
Until this changes, we shall miseducate a large part of the talent pool for America's
business leadership. The one hopeful sign is that the subject now seems open for discussion.
Indeed, the Harvard Business Review recently conducted a debate about the M.B.A.degree.
Most contributors agreed it is not very useful. M.B.A. graduates are "glib and quick-witted",
wrote Henry Mintzberg of McGill University, but are not committed to "particular
industries...but to management as a means of personal advancement."
A recent M.B.A. graduate said it better, "My main reason for obtaining an M.B.A.,
"she admitted, "was not necessarily to improve my business skills but because the degree is
required to 'get in the door'." When the Harvard Business School can acknowledge that--and
act upon it--American management will have taken a huge stride forward.
Mr. Samuelson has been asked to your campus to debate the Phi Beta Kappa honorary
business fraternity about the accusations presented in this editorial. Your responsibility as a
member of the business school, is to practice the question and answer portion of the
upcoming event with the individuals selected to talk with him at the open forum. In order to
assist your friends, you must:
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(1) decide who in your group will be the 5 students to debate this topic
(2) decide which particular point you wish to refute
(3) back up your argument with specific references to this chapter
(4) prepare your group by defining what you believe he means by the following
words:
pseudo skills
all-purpose executives
general managers
skills
EXTRA EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES:
The following alternative exercise to supplement the material in the textbook can be obtained
from:
Marcic, Dorothy & Seltzer, Joe. Organizational Behavior: Experiences and Cases, 5th Ed.
South-Western College Publishing Company, 1998.
The Merit Bonus Activity. p. 86-87. Time: 50 minutes, or 20 minutes if only done as a
discussion.
Purpose: To familiarize the individual with various criteria that can be used to make
decisions regarding organizational rewards. To introduce issues of money as a
motivator, the use of bonus systems, and the concept that people tend to behave in
ways for which they are rewarded.
ROLE PLAYS
Additional role plays relevant to the material in this chapter are located in Appendix A of
this instructor’s manual.