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The present study investigated the impact of an antecedent intervention in the form of a daily posted schedule on the interobserver agreement (IOA) assessment of educational goals implemented within a classroom at a private school serving individuals with disabilities. During baseline, the percentage of academic goals with interobserver agreement was low and stable (M = 5%). Teacher performance improved during the intervention (M = 92%). A reversal replicated this effect and performance maintained during 6-week, 6-month, and 1-year follow-up probes. Results suggest a daily posted schedule can effectively increase interobserver agreement assessment by direct-care teaching staff. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Performance appraisal systems are often considered primarily in their role as criterion measures for validation studies. Even when they are considered in other organizational roles, there has traditionally been a strong focus on improving the accuracy of the appraisals. The present article argues that the proper focus of performance appraisal is to change employees' behavior on the job—both task performance behavior and contextual performance. Specifically, appraisals are best considered as part of a larger performance management system, where the entire focus is on improving performance. Such a focus has important implications for how concerned we are about perceived accuracy and fairness. Furthermore, when viewed in this way, it is clear that we must consider how to leverage individual level performance up to the level of the firm, since improving firm performance is critical to any organization's strategic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Current Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) research and practice may be characterized as either behavior focused or results focused. These two approaches stem from different origins and have different characteristics. The behavior-focused approach stems from applied behavior analysis (ABA) methods and emphasizes direct observation of and intervention on target behaviors of employees. In contrast, the behavioral systems approach encourages a shift from focusing on behavior exclusively toward focusing more on business results. A systems-oriented, results-focused approach toward Organizational Behavior Management is suggested as a means of making the field more relevant to the concerns of the business world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how to conduct a Behavioral Systems Analysis (BSA) to aid in the design of targeted performance improvement interventions. BSA is a continuous process of analyzing the right variables to the right extent to aid in planning and managing performance at the organization, process, and job levels. BSA helps to build alignment among activities within an organization to better provide value-adding products or services to the organization's consumers, which ultimately determines its survival. This paper provides an overview of the BSA approach, a Behavioral Systems Analysis Questionnaire (BSAQ) to guide the performance analyst, and an example of the BSAQ applied to an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance feedback is one of the most widely used tools in organizational settings. To date, little research has been conducted focusing on comparisons of the differential effects of the sources, frequency, or media used for feedback on both the quality and quantity of performance. This research investigated the effects of different feedback sources for performance (peer vs. supervisor) on quality and quantity (separate and combined) of typing performance. The source of feedback did not differentially influence performance, although this result may have been due to a failure to establish a clear distinction between the two roles. Feedback, compared to no feedback, increased the targeted typing performance significantly. Feedback for accuracy of performance yielded the largest overall results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]