The Matching Law and Organizational Behavior

Abstract

We know from basic research on the matching law that given two concurrent schedules of reinforcement, an individual will allocate responding (time) across the schedules in a manner consistent with the rates of obtained reinforcement under the two alternatives. This principle can be used to analyze behavior in organizations in a qualitative way by treating different schedules of reinforcement which are concurrently available to employees. Further, these concurrent schedules or environments can be characterized as competitive or noncompetitive. It is maintained that the competitive concurrent schedules interfere with effective behavior and that interventions which defeat or reduce this competitiveness concurrent schedules is presented and examples from the management literature are provided to illustrate the process.