Over the past decade, behavior analysts have increasingly used the term establishing operation (EO) to refer to environmental events that influence the behavioral effects of operant consequences. Nonetheless, some elements of current terminology regarding EOs may interfere with applied behavior analysts' efforts to predict, control, describe, and understand behavior. The present paper (a) describes how the current conceptualization of the EO is in need of revision, (b) suggests alternative terms, including the generic term motivating operation (MO), and (c) provides examples of MOs and their behavioral effects using articles from the applied behavior analysis literature.DESCRIPTORS: motivation, establishing operations, abolishing operations, motivating operations, behavior-analytic terminologyThe term establishing operation (EO), originally used by Keller and Schoenfeld (1950) and then by Millenson (1967) to denote motivating events, has been revived and reformulated in a series of papers by Michael (e.g., 1982Michael (e.g., , 1983Michael (e.g., , 1988Michael (e.g., , 1993aMichael (e.g., , 1993bMichael (e.g., , 2000. Michael defined EOs as environmental events, operations, or stimulus conditions that affect an organism's behavior by altering (a) the reinforcing or punishing effectiveness of other environmental events and (b) the frequency of occurrence of that part of the organism's repertoire relevant to those events as consequences. Michael termed the first effect the reinforcer-establishing effect and the second effect the evocative effect. Unconditioned establishing operations (UEOs) do not require a learning history to change the effectiveness of consequences. In contrast, conditioned establishing operations (CEOs) acquire their motivating function as a result of a particular learning history. Michael
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here http://dro.dur.ac.uk/17255/. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 0The implications of customer and entrepreneurial orientations for SME growth 1 IntroductionResearch has long recognized entrepreneurial small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as a major engine of economic growth (Henderson and Weiler, 2010). Understanding the factors behind growth has a broad economic and policy relevance, especially because growth-oriented enterprises are an important source of job creation and revenue generation in market economies (Parker, 2004;Valliere, 2006). Nevertheless, the growth of SMEs is still one of the unsolved puzzles in management and business research (Davidsson et al., 2005; Clarysse et al., 2011). In order to overcome existing liabilities of smallness or newness (e.g., Aldrich and Auster, 1986; Brüderl and Schüßler, 1990), and to be able to compete successfully in the market, firms need to grow at least to some extent (Garnsey, 1998). Accordingly, firm growth has become the major indicator for overall business success within entrepreneurship research (Carton and Hofer, 2006).Firm growth can be influenced by business orientations such as customer orientation (CO) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). However, research on EO and CO provides confusing results to some extent. Although there is a general understanding that these constructs are somehow related to increasing firm success, empirical studies have assumed different relationships among them, have measured them differently, and thus have obtained a battery of different results (Atuahene-Gima and Ko, 2001;Baker and Sinkula, 2009;Barrett and Weinstein, 1998;Becherer and Maurer, 1997; Bhuian et al., 2005; Hult and Ketchen, 2001; Li et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2002; Luo et al. 2005; Matsuno et al., 2002;Miles and Arnold, 1991; Narver, 1998, 2000;Tzokas et al., 2001).In addition, it remains unknown to what extent EO and CO represent distinct business philosophies, or whether these constructs contain negative redundancies. Also, it is not clear if these constructs necessarily lead to SME growth or how the different orientations can be balanced within one firm. One might assume that scoring high on all orientations should contribute to the highest growth potential, but this may not be the case....
For over a decade, the failure to reproduce findings in several disciplines, including the biomedical, behavioral, and social sciences, have led some authors to claim that there is a so-called "replication (or reproducibility) crisis" in those disciplines. The current article examines: (a) various aspects of the reproducibility of scientific studies, including definitions of reproducibility; (b) published concerns about reproducibility in the scientific literature and public press; (c) variables involved in assessing the success of attempts to reproduce a study; (d) suggested factors responsible for reproducibility failures; (e) types of validity of experimental studies and threats to validity as they relate to reproducibility; and (f) evidence for threats to reproducibility in the behavior science/analysis literature. Suggestions for improving the reproducibility of studies in behavior science and analysis are described throughout. Keywords Reproducibility . Replication . Null hypothesis significance testing . Statistical power . Effect size measures . Statistical conclusion validity . Construct validityThe crucial role of replication is established in science generally. The undetected equipment failure, the rare and possibly random human errors of procedure, observation, recording, computation, or report are known well enough to make scientists wary of the unreplicated experiment. When we add to the possibility of the random "fluke," common to all sciences, the fact of individual organismic differences and the possibility of systematic experimenter effects in at least the
The establishing operation (EO) is a behavior-analytic motivational concept that prompts a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of motivation with practical implications. The field of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) has made limited use of the EO concept, but other specialization areas in behavior analysis have developed EO-based treatments. Analogous success in OBM will likely require advances in the use of molecular analyses of behavior, functional analysis technologies, and analyses of verbal behavior. Theoretical and technical progress will also require a better understanding of Michael's (1982;1993a;1993b) taxonomy of unconditioned and conditioned EOs. Therefore, this taxonomy is illustrated with empirical research examples and plausible organizational examples at a molecular level of analysis, including the unconditioned effects of activity deprivation and conditioned EOs related to nicotine deprivation, behavior-based safety observations, and intrinsic motivation to learn on the job. A behavioral approach to understanding motivation is practical and empirically approachable, and the class of motivational variables known as EOs will help advance our understanding of workplace motivation.Ryan Olson, Sean Laraway and John Austin are affiliated with Western Michigan University.The authors would like to thank Jack Michael for reviewing a previous version of the manuscript and discussing several helpful issues with us. They would also like to recognize Susan Snycerski for her contributions to several important aspects of the article. Address correspondence to Ryan Olson,
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