I. Problem Area
College News tried to reestablish its reputation as a reputable non-racist news source. College news tried to change to be more inclusive and less biased by making space for non-White students and taking advice from Multicultural Organizations. The key players were Rod, Hellen, Multicultural Organizations, and the rest of the news crew.
This change attempt happened after College News showed mug shots of only African American athletes who were charged, but not convicted, with drinking underage. This caused a huge backlash from the African American community, and the general multicultural community, inside of the midsized predominantly White College. This coverage caused boycotts of College News and the threat of losing some of the college's multicultural alumni donors. College News had a crew and staff that was all White with the exception of one person, who was not there the day College News decided to broadcast these mugshots.
The proposed change was to make College News a safe space for multicultural people to become members and to take the advice of Multicultural Organizations to make news that did not perpetuate biases and told the stories of the multicultural communities better. These changes were being proposed to try to salvage the reputation of College News and the college in general.
The change agents, or the people proposing the change, were Rod and Multicultural Organizations. Rod was a low self-monitor. He said whatever was on his mind for the most part. He was the College News’ Faculty Adviser, but he had relatively little power over the actual organization. His motive was that he did not want himself and his organization to look bad and potentially lose funding. The Multicultural Organizations were made up of a large array of people who were mostly high self-monitors because of their experiences with racism and stereotyping. They had no power over College News and anything they did to point out how College News was doing bad had the potential of reflecting badly on them because they were part of the same college. Their motive was to make the college a more inclusive place and to keep the college from looking bad.
The primary targets of the change, or people the change was meant for, were Hellen, the president of College News, and College News' crew and staff. Hellen was a High Authoritarian, she believed in traditionalism, felt uncomfortable about change, was highly passive-aggressive, and quietly hostile. She had most of the power over what happened in College News. She had a negative change orientation. The College News' crew and staff were, for the most part, high self-monitors, meaning they adjusted how they acted based on their environment. They had some power over College News stories, but the final say was up to Hellen. They also had a negative change orientation.
II. Statement of Theory.
The theories that will be used are the Behavior Modification Approach (based on operant conditioning), Feedback Systems, and the “Female” Script of Negative Feedback.
A key concept here is incentives that reinforce and maintain the behavior that one wants to change. These approaches seek to change behavior through new incentives.
The Behavior Modification Approach-based on operant conditioning assumes that current employee behaviors are maintained through rewards and that to change behavior one must shift rewards from current behaviors to new ones. To do this, the first step is for the change agent to identify behaviors for change that are observable, measurable, task-related, and critical to the task. The next step is for the change agent to find the baseline frequency. Then, the change agent should analyze the functional consequences for the employee. The change agent should find the incentives that employees receive for their current behavior. Finally, the next step is for the change agent to intervene by developing an intervention that fits the organization. This intervention should fit the history and culture of the organization. After this, the change agent should apply the new intervention which stops rewarding the prior behavior and starts rewarding the new one. The last steps is to test frequently to assess whether the behavior changed in the way that was wanted. If the change occurred, the new reinforcements should be kept up. If the wanted change did not occur, the change agent has to figure out at what step the failure occurred and start again.
Feedback Systems are informal appraisals of how someone is doing that can be given at any time. They can occur from the top-down or bottom-up in the organization. There are two types of feedback, and they are positive and negative feedback.
Positive feedback is the feedback that indicates the person being appraised is performing well or improving. This feedback is usually uplifting to employees. However, if it is perceived to be ingenuine or manipulative, comes from someone the person being appraised by does not respect, or is overused then it is not uplifting to the person being appraised.
Negative feedback is the feedback that indicates that someone being appraised has not performed well and may be declining. This feedback is distressing to the person receiving it and may have unintended consequences that have a ripple effect. After receiving it, individuals receiving this feedback first ask themselves if they are able to perform the task that they are receiving the feedback on. Negative feedback may then reduce self-efficacy in accomplishing the task. The person receiving the negative feedback might stop doing the task feedback was given on or try to avoid it. The person may also criticize the task to cope with inadequacy. Next, the person receiving the feedback may ask themselves if they can actually perform the role that required the task. The person who received the feedback could conclude they are a bad employee and look for a different job. In some extreme cases, negative feedback can cause one to question one’s ability as a person causing the person receiving feedback to become depressed.
The “Female” Script of Negative Feedback is the general steps some studies suggest are followed by most women when giving negative feedback in a Feedback System. When these steps are followed, there is less of a chance of the feedback receiver’s feelings of inadequacy and frustration spiraling out of control and more of a chance of the problem area actually improving.
The first step is meeting the feedback receiver in private. The second step is to set the scene by asking the feedback receiver about progress on the task they will be receiving feedback on. Then third step is to acknowledge the feedback receiver’s progress. The fourth step is to raise the issue of concern without blaming or criticizing the feedback receiver. The fifth step is inviting the feedback receiver’s reaction by asking what they think. The sixth step is to give examples of the underperformance and consequences. The seventh step is to invite the feedback receiver to respond to examples. The eighth step is to ask the feedback receiver about ideas on how to improve. The ninth step is to comment on the feedback receiver’s ideas. The tenth step is to give ideas for improvement. The eleventh step is to talk about both sets of ideas. The twelfth, and final step, is to create an agreed-upon plan of action and monitoring.
III. Change Management Plan
The primary change goal was to make College News a reputable non-racist news source. This was supposed to be done by making College News a more inclusive place and by showing diverse news stories. The resource goals were to make College News a safe place that was inviting to diverse students and to better represent diverse students in an effort to protect College News from monetary resource cuts. The type of relationship desired between the target of the change, Hellen and College News’ crew and staff, and the agents of change, Rod and Multicultural Organizations, was a partnership. In this partnership, Rod and Multicultural Organizations were supposed to give advice to Hellen and College News’ crew that Hellen and College News’ crew staff should have acted on.
Rod and Multicultural Organizations should have presented and did present themselves as helpful support. They should have addressed and did address the target’s image goals by explaining that this is a common mistake news outlets make and then presenting themselves and their strategies as a path to save face. The main strategy they used was to explain how the culture of College News was hostile to diverse students. They showed that some of the jokes being made had racist roots. They also showed that College News did not reach out to diverse students to try to pull them into the news crew and staff. They explained this is a common blind spot of all types of media organizations. Finally, they suggested news stories that depicted a fuller image of diverse students. They explained that it was natural that College News did not know about these stories because they did not have a very diverse staff or crew.
The main reason why the change failed was that the culture of College News incentivized racist behavior. Students displaying racist behavior were rewarded by receiving less pushback on story ideas and, in general, less rudeness and hassle from Hellen. Rod and the Multicultural Organizations failed to disincentivize this behavior. They also failed to keep modifying their approach as they saw their approach failed.
The strategy to overcome the racist culture of College News is to disincentivize the task of behaving racist by employing a feedback system to give positive and negative feedback about attitudes and behavior. This should have been carried out primarily through Rod because he was an everyday witness to College News' inner-workings, and he was respected. He should have employed a “Female” Script of Negative Feedback and an open positive script. He should have called in Multicultural Organizations to help give feedback on major events.
For an example of open positive feedback, if someone decided to take a story about an event at the Multicultural Organizations, he could have thanked them in front of everyone and pointed out that this would be moving College News towards becoming more inclusive and representative. He could have also said the member proposing the story is doing their part well.
For an example of negative feedback, if a crew member says a racist joke, Rod could have called the crew member into his office with someone from the Multicultural Organizations and shut the door for privacy. He could have asked about the crew member’s progress and efforts to make College News more inclusive and representative. He could have listened to the answer and acknowledged the progress the crew member made by taking on some news stories. He could have then brought up the joke the crew member made. He could have then asked what the crew member thought this did to the inclusivity of College News. He could have then explained the very real consequences of these actions, starting with making it harder to have a diverse news team. He could have explained this makes College News look bad and that it could cause College News to lose its funding. He could have then asked what the crew member thinks of all this. Next, he could have asked the crew member for ideas on how to stop these sorts of jokes from being said by him and others on the news team. Rod could have then given his feedback and thoughts about the crew member’s ideas. Then Rod and the Multicultural Member could have proposed thinking about the history behind jokes like this before saying them and recognizing these are micro aggressions towards people. Rod and the Multicultural Organization member could have then talked about the good part of the crew member’s ideas and how they are helpful and then could have talked about how the historical context makes the joke painful and how thinking about the past is key to understanding the present. Then they could have made a plan to study some of the history behind the crew member’s joke, to not say jokes like this, and to shut down people when they start to make jokes like this. Finally, Rod should have let the crew member know that he would be monitoring the situation, and then Rod should follow through on this.
The Behavior Modification Approach (based on operant conditioning), Feedback Systems, and the “Female” Script of Negative Feedback justify the strategies used here. First, the bad behavior would have been disincentivized as much as possible because the feedback from Rod would have counteracted the feedback from Hellen. Second, good behavior would have been incentivized by good feedback from Rod. This feedback would have been given through a Feedback system, that is informal conversations with Rod that are given whenever needed. This feedback system would have assured that everyone be given feedback when it was needed which would have addressed their behavior. Because genuinely good feedback from someone is received well if not overdone, this would have helped bolster the community to act better. Because negative feedback is generally taken with a rippling bad effect on self-efficacy, the feedback should have been given with a Female Script, which is usually the most effective negative feedback.
There are several indicators of success. One indicator of success would have been if more diverse students join College News. Another indicator of success would have been if no racist or dog-whistle jokes were told by the staff or crew. The next indicator of success would have been if the number of stories run about diverse individuals increased. Finally, the last indicator of success would have been a larger ratio of positive stories told about diverse individuals or groups compared to negative.
A minimum definition of success would have been that some more diverse news stories were told, and that College News did not lose its funding. This would have meant that Rod and the Multicultural Organizations would have convinced the crew and staff and Hellen to listen to Rod and the Multicultural Organizations and take on stories about diversity. It would have also meant that no real structural change had happened.
A maximum definition of success would have been a new culture that was inclusive to diverse students and more representative news coverage. For this to happen, College News would have had to completely listen to Rod and the Multicultural Organizations.
The main cost of the strategy is that Hellen and other crew and staff members may have been upset about the changes in culture and about constantly being told they are performing badly because they had no intention of changing at all. If she were very upset, she might have sabotaged College News by leaving it without a new president. If crew and staff members were very upset, they could all have left to sabotage College News. Also, other crew and staff members could have lost the feeling of self-efficacy and started to leave or become depressed. This could have made College News run poorly.
College News had recently done so well that it had won an award. It was nominated for another award. If College News’ crew and staff were to become upset or depressed, members could stop showing up for productions and stop covering stories. If this were to have happened, College News would have surely lost its chance of winning this award. The worst case would have been that College News would get shut down because of dysfunction.
A backup solution for these risks and costs is to prepare new individuals to enter these roles. This could be done by mentoring excited dedicated staff and crew to prepare them to take the roles of individuals who might be disheartened and want to leave. There can also be a push to recruit more staff and crew members. Both these things can be done by Rod. In addition, Rod can hold pep talks with members who are becoming disheartened, to explain to them that they are making progress and that they can do it and to recognize all of their accomplishments and their importance in College News.
There is a moderate chance that this plan would have worked. The culture was so ingrained that the most likely this might have worked is if most of the members left after new members were trained.
Roloff, M. Learning Module 19b: Behavior Modification Approach