Volume 41 Issue 2 of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management

Abstract

Although issue 2 of volume 41 includes few manuscripts, each manuscript is sure to make a mark on the field! As you may know, JOBM has been publishing a special series of manuscripts which will also be featured as chapters in the upcoming book Handbook of Organizational Performance: Foundations and Advances, edited by Drs. Doug Johnson and Carl Johnson. In this issue of JOBM, we have included three papers from this series. Foxall urges us to think outside of the organizational behavior management (OBM) box by (r)introducing us to consumer behavior analysis. Consumer behavior analysis blends behavioral economics and marketing to predict and control the behavior of consumers. In this paper, Foxall examines how marketing departments in organizations predict and influence consumer behavior by manipulating product variables (e.g., price, package size). For those of us used to thinking about the management of individual employees or systems, consumer behavior analysis is an eye opener! Also in this issue, Gravina et al. provide a nice overview of the assessment of individual employee performance. As these authors point out, assessing before intervening is common in other areas of behavior analytic application, but may be less common in OBM. Gravina et al. cover a variety of types of behavior analytic assessment, including historical assessment and the assessment of procedural acceptability. They conclude by making some very interesting recommendations regarding the use of technology in assessment and the validation of some of our assessment tools. Erath et al. provide a comprehensive description of research methodologies used in OBM. These authors cover both single subject and group experimental designs, and provide excellent examples of previously published OBM studies which have used each of the designs they describe. This paper is destined to be the go-to resource for anyone interested in the design and conduct of research in OBM. It will surely be required reading in a number of undergraduate and graduate OBM courses for many years to come!