A supervisor is trying to make his new assistant manager Roger more assertive in dealing with his co-workers. For the first couple of weeks, every time Roger issued an order or made a decision based on what is good for the company rather than in accordance with the wishes of the co-worker making the request, Roger's supervisor congratulated him. With such positive reinforcement, Roger has begun to assume a more managerial role. This is an example of:
A) shaping
B) enactive mastery
C) knowledge management
D) behavior modeling
E) task segmentation

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Shaping is a technique used to train individuals to exhibit certain behavior by reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior. In this case, the supervisor is reinforcing Roger's assertiveness in dealing with co-workers by congratulating him every time he makes a decision that benefits the company. This is a form of shaping because the supervisor is rewarding Roger's behavior, which is a successively closer approximation of the desired behavior. The other options are not relevant to this scenario.

A Supervisor Is Trying to Make His New Assistant Manager