Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American Case Study - 2

Joe Salatino, President of Great Northern American - Case Study Example Joe can apply the selected learning theory (operant conditioning) in a number of ways to improve his employees’ performance.   Firstly, this model can be directly linked to good employee morale and thereby indirectly to increased productivity in the workplace. A positive reinforcement in the form of verbal praise or pay increase would assist Joe to elicit a desired employee response. A positive response from employees in turn may aid the company to increase its productivity to a desired level. The Great North American may have numerous business projects to be completed in preplanned time. Such projects would involve a group of employees working together to accomplish a common goal. If any of the project team members fails to meet his/her individual duties and responsibilities, this situation would adversely affect the progress of the entire project. Consequently, such a situation may lead to conflicts among project team members, punishment from top executives, and loss of market reputation. As Fagnani points out, the operant conditioning model makes all employees accountable for their individual actions and attractively rewards outstandingly performing teams (â€Å"Operate conditioning†). Hence, this model may assist Joe to complete business projects successfully on time and within a fixed budget.    Effective diversity management is another fruitful advantage of the operant conditioning concept. The emergence of globalization made employees globally mobile and this situation consequently led to increased level of cultural and ethnic diversity within most organizational settings. In this situation, managers with poor communication skill would often fail to communicate with a diverse group of employees effectively and this situation in turn may result in a productivity decline. The case study indicates that the company is growing rapidly. Therefore, Joe must ensure that his managers have the potential to effectively communicate with the growing employee base. In this context, the operant conditioning model would be beneficial for Joe to enhance leadership training programs and thereby make certain that his managers are efficient in handling a global audience.