You have been getting a lot of complaints recently from your boss about the consistent tardiness of your department’s sales associates at a large retail store. The time boss is really getting upset. He points out that the tardiness reduces the amount of time associates are providing assistance and replenishing items on display. You realize that the tardiness is a type of avoidance behavior—it delays the start of a very boring job. Your work group is very cohesive, and each of the members will follow what the group wants to do. One of the leaders of the group seems to spend a lot of time getting the group into trouble. You want the group to come in on time, but you don’t really want a confrontation on the issue because, frankly, you don’t think it is important enough to risk sheet records indicate that your people’s average startup time is about 10 minutes late. Although you have never been concerned about the tardiness problem, your getting everyone upset with you. You decide to use an O.B. Mod. approach.

1. Trace through the five steps in the O.B. Mod. model to show how it could be applied to this tardiness problem. Make sure you are specific in identifying the critical performance behaviors and the antecedents and consequences of the functional analysis.

2. Do you think the approach you have suggested in your answer will really work? Why or why not?