Organizational Behavior Management: a supplement and alternative to traditional areas of work in the analysis of behavior.
Coaching adults without OBM is like doing ABA without data—possible, but sloppy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bakalarz (2023) wrote a position paper. He says every BCBA who teaches parents or supervises RBTs must know Organizational Behavior Management. The paper is not a new experiment. It is a map that shows where OBM tools fit in day-to-day ABA work.
What they found
The author found a gap. Most BCBAs learn how to change child behavior, not adult behavior. Without OBM skills, coaches fall back on guess-work when they train parents or run staff meetings. The paper argues that OBM gives you the same precision with adults that you already have with kids.
How this fits with other research
Maguire et al. (2022) proved the point in real life. They mixed BST with OBM and pushed residential-school staff to 100 % COVID-19 rule following. The effects lasted a full month.
Watson et al. (2007) did it earlier in a hospital. Goal setting, task clarification, and weekly feedback doubled safe hand-offs in the OR. Bakalarz (2023) wraps these single studies into one clear message: learn OBM or keep guessing.
Ezerins et al. (2022) stretch the idea to Zoom. They show the same OBM tools fix rude chat messages and camera-off behavior in virtual teams. Together, the papers turn one position paper into a trail of worked examples.
Why it matters
If you write parent training goals or run RBT meetings, this paper is your cue to stop winging it. Take an OBM CEU. Pick one tool—participative goal setting, task clarification, or feedback loops—and pilot it with your next parent or staff group. Measure, graph, and adjust just like you do with clients. You will trade frustration for data-based hits the same way Maguire and R et al. did.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this paper is to present to a community of behavior specialists, an overview of the subdiscipline of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) in three aspects. First, OBM is a sub-branch of the larger field of Applied Behavior Analysis. It also has two other aspects: it can complement the traditional set of skills useful to behavior analysts or be one of the alternative careers for them. Behavior specialists predominantly, and especially in Poland, teach populations with special needs. Whether this is in special education, social assistance or select areas of health care, with young children with autism or adults with intellectual disability, this is where most behavior analysts work. At the same time, they often need to skillfully cooperate in teams, sometimes manage them or instruct people other than those with whom they are usually in contact, such as new team members, parents, and other specialists. OBM can be seen as a supplementary background that answers these needs. It is also a possible alternative career path, with a distinct client base and flagship journal, as well as specific procedures in behavior analysis, experts in the field and specialisms. Different client populations, variations in instruction techniques and knowledge of response generalization all point to that conclusion that traditional behavior analysts might be largely at a disadvantage in the area covered by OBM: that of a management and team leading and training typically developing clients. Behavior analysts require a background in OBM, otherwise they might “reinvent the OBM wheel” or – which is worse – apply their experiences one-to-one with special populations and bring with them harmful assumptions.
Advances in Psychiatry and Neurology, 2023 · doi:10.5114/ppn.2023.135981