ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the organizations can encourage people to make desired changes and reward them according to performance outcomes, but employees have responsibility. Reinforcement is the most underutilized means of driving behavior change in organizations. Reinforcement is a means of making the incentive to change greater than the incentive to stay the same. Reinforcement refers to all means an organization utilizes to recognize and reward desired behavior and deliver negative consequences for undesired behavior. Rewards and recognition have significantly more impact when they are thoughtfully targeted to individuals or groups. “Generic” acknowledgement is well-meaning but misses the real value of the emotional connection with people. Positive reinforcement isn’t valuable only because it rewards specific efforts or outcomes but because it also is a means of reinforcing company values and objectives. Negative consequences for poor performance are usually dictated by company human resource policy.
