Initial Assumptions About Motivation and Leadership
The initial assumptions held by the writer with respect to the motivation of people in organizational environments were tied to my understanding of the motivation theories of B. F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, and Frederick Herzberg. The writer's assumptions, to an extent, represented an amalgamation of these theoretical approaches to motivation.
Skinner's motivation theory relied on reinforcement behavior. Skinner held that it was necessary to look outside of an organism for an explanation of its behavior. Following through with this premise, he concluded that it was possible, through the manipulation of variables external to an organism, to both predict and modify its behavior. The principal means of such manipulation was reinforcement both positive and negative.
Skinner viewed the causal chain of behavior as a three link process. The first link was an operation performed on an organism from without, while the second link was an inner psychological condition. The third link was a specific behavior. While complete, accurate, and independent information concerning the second link would permit prediction of the third link behavior without recourse to the first link, such information simply is not available. Thus, in the management of behavior, which includes the motivation of individuals within organizational environments, it is necessary, according to Skinner, to emphasize the relationship between the first and third links actions on an organism from without, and the organism's response behaviors.
In acting on an organism from without, Skinner theorized that the reinforcement actions could be either positive or negative. Thus, depending upon the situation and upon the desired behavior, an appropriate stimulus might be either the introduction of a factor into an organism's environment a positive reinforcement, or the withdrawal of a factor from an organism'...