Collaborating with other disciplines

Your textbook points to many similarities and many differences between OBM and OD. The text also highlights potential areas for collaboration. Throughout your future careers in Applied Behavior Analysis, you will often have to collaborate with others from other disciplines. This will require an understanding of other fields as well as the skills to determine where you can collaborate and create the most effective treatment environment for clients.

For this week’s Discussion you will compare and contrast OBM and OD as well as extend some of the points from this week’s Reading to your future practice:

1.           Identify and explain two key ways in which Organizational Behavior Management and Organizational Development are different.

2.           Describe one of the areas you feel OBM can contribute the most to in the field of OD and why.

3.           Discuss what is meant by “humble behaviorism,” as referenced in your textbook from Nuernger (1991).

4.           Discuss how the ideas of reciprocation and “humble behaviorism,” will impact collaboration with other disciplines in your future career in behavior analysis.

Student 1’s answer

Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) and Organizational Development (OD) differ on the basic philosophy from which they are built upon. OBM relies on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Skinner’s operant conditioning while OD is based on humanistic philosophy and applied social psychology (Redmon, 2001). OBM targets problem solving at any level (direct service) while OD is a top-down approach which requires the participation of senior level staff (Redmon, 2001).

 

OBM can contribute to OD by its focus on outcomes instead of the process oriented focus that OD tends to utilize and by determining critical skills that make effective intervention and providing data for evaluating the monetary impact of the intervention (Redmon, 2001).

 

Humble behaviorism was introduced by Neuringer to express the importance of collaborating with other disciplines and avoiding the “I’m right – you’re wrong” attitude (Redmon, 2001).  He encouraged those in ABA to consider alternatives and to remember that all knowledge is subject to change in order to emphasize the importance of maintaining a positive image for ABA professionals (Redmon, 2001).  This is an extremely important concept to embrace when working in a field that has multidisciplinary treatment teams most of the time.  In order to have a cohesive and respectful working relationship with other professionals, one must remember that other have the right to disagree with your perspective or professional opinion.

 

This was never more evident for me than when working on a team where the parent had brought in a private Greenspan / DIR consultant to collaborate with the team, which functioned as an ABA team.  The two philosophies could not be more different!  But we respected each other and somehow came to successful agreements about treatment throughout the year.  I found that the most important thing or me to do (other than remain professional) was to stick with empirical data to prove any argument and avoid opinion.  I also welcomed her feedback and embraced her many years of experience because she was extremely knowledgeable about many things concerning autism.