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Ludwig Frazier 2012
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Ludwig Frazier 2012
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To cite this article: Timothy D. Ludwig & Christopher B. Frazier (2012): Employee Engagement and
Organizational Behavior Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 32:1, 75-82
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Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 32:75–82, 2012
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0160-8061 print/1540-8604 online
DOI: 10.1080/01608061.2011.619439
DISCUSSION ARTICLE
75
76 T. D. Ludwig and C. B. Frazier
ment, attachment, mood (Macey & Schneider, 2008), job satisfaction, and
organizational commitment (Saks, 2006; Wefald, & Downey, 2008). Positive
Affectivity has also been highly correlated with engagement (Macey &
Schneider, 2008). Of course, the causal directionality and “third variable”
problem is pervasive in this research, because it is unclear if these psy-
chological states lead to engagement, if engagement leads to these states,
or if these states all covary with another variable altogether (e.g., company
success).
Variables that lead to engagement are numerous. A highly correlated
variable in Saks’ (2006) review, as well as the large-scale study produced
by Towers Perrin (2003), was job characteristics (cf., Hackman & Oldham,
1976). These include challenging work, autonomy over decisions, and career
advancement opportunities. Saks (2006) argued employees must be given
adequate resources to get their job done well. Auxiliary policies and facili-
ties such as a day care center, gym, and cafeteria help employees balance
their lives more efficiently with more flexibility, supposedly leading to
engagement (Foursight Consulting, 2005; McLeish, 2008; Pitt-Catsouphes &
Matz-Costa, 2008; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).
Management behavior moderates the relationship between engage-
ment and organizational outcomes (e.g., sales) and therefore can influ-
ence employee behavior (Smith, Huelsman, Bergman, & Ludwig, 2010).
Blessing White, Inc. (2008) state that managers must be engaged for their
subordinates to be engaged. Additionally, survey data suggest that man-
agement must be customer focused, communicate effectively, and have the
employees’ well-being as a high priority to produce engaged employees
(Towers Perrin, 2003) because they have built “trust” (Chughtai & Buckley,
2008). Organizational variables that may be related to engagement include
human resources, policies, values, culture, technology, etc. (Towers Perrin,
2003) that promote a perception of procedural justice (i.e., how fair
employees perceive the processes around outcomes; Saks, 2006).
Correlational research suggests the outcomes of engagement are indeed
impressive, as they speak directly to business results (Hyten, 2009).
Engagement and OBM 77
A. C. Daniels (2009) argues a key variable that drives all organizational out-
comes is human behavior: “If management practices, systems, and processes
are not designed on the basis of known facts about behavior, no organiza-
tion can expect to create a workplace where all employees consistently give
their best” (p. 7). Indeed, the variables associated with engagement above
are not uncommon to the science of behavior analysis applied to organiza-
tions called Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), which works on
improving behavior without being concerned with or attempting to change
psychological traits, states, or other covert phenomena.
Reinforcement
A. C. Daniels (2009) suggests positive reinforcement is the most efficient way
to make behavior effective and create the kind of organizational cultural
behaviors that are credited to engagement. According to Daniels, posi-
tive reinforcement has to be personal, immediate, contingent on behavior,
and frequent. Geller (2003) recommends noncontingent rewards over pos-
itive reinforcement, because it can be used to recognize individuals and
groups with financial or social outcomes. When delivered effectively by
management, such rewards can have a profound effect on a positive work
environment. Geller (2003) suggests rewards create pleasant personal states
78 T. D. Ludwig and C. B. Frazier
Adequate Resources
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Deming (1986) famously said that it is management’s job to remove the bar-
riers to employees’ success. OBM takes a similar view whereby availability of
resources serves as an antecedent to promote behaviors and to ensure that
behaviors are maintained with the proper reinforcers. Take, for example,
a story told by Ludwig (2011) where a manager complained that workers
were not doing housekeeping in an industrial plant. After an assessment
of antecedents and consequences, it was found that workers did not have
the right tools conveniently located proximal to their housekeeping behav-
iors. Providing those resources (step ladders and work sinks) increased the
behavior regardless of any increase in an “engagement” score.
Management Behaviors
Many management actions that create “engaged” employees can be
explained from an OBM perspective and applied through intervention. OBM
research is full of empirically tested communication tools: task clarification
(Crowell, Anderson, Able, & Sergio, 1988; Rice, Austin, & Gravina, 2009;
Slowiak, Madden, & Mathews, 2005), goal setting (Ludwig & Geller, 1997;
Tittelbach, DeAngelis, Sturmey, & Alvero, 2007), checklists (Eikenhout, &
Austin, 2005; Rodriguez et al., 2005), posted policies (Squires et al., 2007),
and explicit rules (Johnson, Houmanfar, & Smith, 2010).
A related issue to management communication is management consis-
tency. OBM research emphasizes the use of Behavioral Systems Analysis,
including process maps of the managerial processes (Diener, McGee, &
Miguel, 2009) to reveal places where work procedures, tasks, and reinforcers
are ambiguous. When these ambiguities are exposed and corrected, behav-
iors are better specified and reinforced, leading perhaps to the conditions
attributed to “engagement.”
A final management behavior that may be related to the conditions
of engagement is performance feedback (Crowell et al., 1988; Rice et al.,
2009; Squires et al., 2007; Tittelbach et al., 2007). A. C. Daniels and
Engagement and OBM 79
Autonomy
Another aspect of engagement, also popular among noted social psychol-
ogists (Allport, 1937; Deci & Ryan, 1985) is the concept of autonomy.
This aspect of engagement is argued to be related to a “positive” culture
(Saks, 2006; Towers Perrin, 2003). Since cultural variables are primarily
measured with survey research, there are very few behavioral examples
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Experimental Causality
It is easy for organizations to gather data from their employees by giving
them surveys that may tell them valuable information (Blessing White, Inc.,
2008). However, it is much more difficult for those organizations to uti-
lize that information for effective behavior change. All of the engagement
studies reviewed above were based on correlational explorations between
survey data, psychological questionnaires, and organizational data. While
these exploratory studies may direct us toward high-impact interventions
whose impact maintains over time and may generalize to other behaviors,
discretionary and otherwise, they are severely limited in the practical, causal
advice they can offer the practitioner. Indeed when investigating the Gallup
company’s survey approach to engagement, which they sell for tens of thou-
sands of dollars, we found that after the survey results are completed they
80 T. D. Ludwig and C. B. Frazier
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