Organizational Behavior Management: a supplement and alternative to traditional areas of work in the analysis of behavior

Purpose
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.

Views
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.

Conclusions
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.