Week Nine Blog

Malott, M.E. and Nartinez, W.S. (2006).  Addressing organizational complexity: A behavioural systems analysis application to higher education. International Journal of Psychology, 41 (6), 559-570.

This paper describes a change initiative of a higher education in Mexico by applying a behavioral system analysis approach. The analysis shows how behavior analysts can alter the behavior of individuals by manipulating behavioral contingencies. Organizational change is more complex than specific behavior change because organization analysis involves many components. A behavioral entity comprises actions of a single individual or group. An organization such as a university involves greater complexity that includes “1. Interlocking behavioral contingencies of many faculty, students, staff, and administrators and their interaction with external system’s members such as government officials, unions etc.; 2. Insignificant impact of a single behavior of an individual on overall output of the organization; 3. Aggregate products; and 4. unique dynamic configurations of behavioral contingencies of multiple individuals” (Malott and Martinez, 2006, p. 559). So, a behavior and an organization involve different units of analysis.  This study attempted to describe how the organizational complexity study can guide change strategies.

Mexican government has been struggling to reduce the people’s illiteracy rate. The government has taken an initiative to raise the educational level of their school teachers up to at least BA degree from a 3 year certificate of technical education. In order to accomplish this target the government has established the National pedagogy University of Veracruz (UPV) in 1980. After twenty years of service the university presented significant problem that threatened its long-term survival. Low productivity, declining enrollment, and outdated programs have caused it to go under considerable transformation. The behavioral systems engineering model (Malott, 2003) has been applied to improve the change.

Changing organization is like engineering (Gilbert, 1996). Like building a bridge, behavioral system analysis also involves scientific principles of behavior, their unique application as each organization is different. “A behavioral contingency is to organizational change like a drop of water is to an ocean (Malott and Martinez, 2006, p. 560)”. The organizational complexity analysis is essential in planning change and in identifying targets which justify resource utilization. This study used three types of complexity-environmental, hierarchical, and component to determine the change plan (Glenn and Malott, 2004).

In environmental complexity analysis they identified variables that are relevant to change are population characteristics, economic conditions, federal and state regulations, labor unions, and elected governments. The hierarchical complexity includes macro-system’s environmental variables , and educational system such as pre-schools, secondary, technical and higher education and their dynamic relationship with government, industry, and family. The component complexity which is determined by the number of elements that constitute an organization. Component complexity is important to develop effective interventions that that is survivable in a dynamic environment of an organization. The analysis found enrollment in BA program in 1980 was 7000 which declined to 5000 in 2000, and 2324 in 2004.

The analysis found that high proportion of young and rural population who are living under high level of poverty, government excessive regulation over administrative processes, high illiteracy rate, high drop-out in primary school children, decreasing demand for specific programs, and inefficient and ineffective administrative process. The complexity study helped to identify these variables that are critical in the design of effective intervention. Four change initiatives were identified from the analysis of complexity-“1. Incorporation of adult literacy training at the macro-system level; 2. Adding various options to thesis requirement to increase graduation rate; 3. Development of new programs to increase enrollment; and 4. Re-engineering of the student-centered administrative processes” (Malott and Martinez, 2006, p. 567).