Learning involves a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge as a result of experience. There are several theories that explain how learning occurs, including classical conditioning, operant conditioning, cognitive learning, and social learning. For learning to be effective, trainees must be motivated, the information must be meaningful, and feedback should be provided. Reinforcement and punishment can shape behaviors by increasing or decreasing the likelihood they will be repeated.

1. LEARNING

2. LEARNING
Learning is any permanent change in behaviour of a
person that occurs as result of experience. It is accompanied
by acquisition of knowledge, skills & expertise which are
relatively permanent.

3. FEATURES OF LEARNING
1) Learning involves change in behaviour of a person :
The change may be good or bad from organisation’s point of view.
For example : bad habits, prejudice, etc may be learnt by an individual.
2) Change in behaviour must be relatively permanent :
To constitute learning, change should be relatively permanent.
Temporary changes may be only reflective and fail to represent any
learning . This rules out behavioural changes caused by fatigue or
drugs.

4. 3) The change in behaviour should occur as a result of
experience, practice or training:
It implies that behaviour caused from maturity, disease, or physical
damages does not constitute learning.
4) The practice or experience must be reinforced in order for
learning to occur:
If reinforcement does not accompany the practice or experience, the
behaviour will eventually disappear.
5) Learning is reflected in behaviour :
A change in an individual’s thought process or attitudes, not
accompanied by behaviour, is no learning.

5. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING
1) TRAINEE MUST BE MOTIVATED TO LEARN:
An employee must see a purpose in learning the information presented
& have a clear understanding of what is presented. If these two
factors are considered, there will be a greater chance of satisfaction.
2) INFORMATION MUST BE MEANINGFUL :
The training material must relate to the purpose of the training
programme or it will stop being a motivator. The material should be
presented in a sequential manner & should provide variety to
prevent boredom & fatigue. Material can be presented through case
studies, lectures, films etc.

6. 3) Learning must be reinforced :
In organisations, both positive & negative reinforcements should be
used.If behaviour is undesirable, the negative reinforcement such as
denial of a pay raise, promotion or transfer can be effective. However,
during the orientation & training period, positive reinforcement is
more effective than negative reinforcement.
4) Organisation of material :
Trainer must remember that well organised material will help the
trainees to remember the things taught to him. A complete outline
of the whole course should be made with the main topics included
under each heading. The training material should be distributed
among trainees well in advance so that they may come prepared in
the lectures, understand operations quickly & remove their doubts by
asking questions from the instructor.

7. 5) FEEDBACK ON LEARNING :
People like to know how much they have learnt &
how well they are doing. The sooner employees
know the results of a quiz test, the sooner they can
assess their progress.
Self graded tests & programmed learning kits provide
the necessary feedback to a person on his progress
on a particular subject.

8. THEORIES OF LEARNING
There are 4 theories which explain how individuals
learn new patters of behaviour :

9. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
-Classical Conditioning deals with the association of one event with
another desired event resulting in a desired behaviour or learning.
-Classical conditioning was given by Ivan Pavlov, a famed Nobel prize
winning physiologist.
-Pavlov conducted an experiment on a dog to study the relation
between the dog’s salivation & ringing of a bell. When he presented a
piece of meat to the dog, he noticed a great deal of salivation. He
called the food as unconditioned response. During the second stage,
he merely rang the bell, but the dog did not salivate in response to
ringing of the bell. He subsequently introduced the sound of the bell
each time the meat was given to the dog. Thus, eventually the dog
learnt to salivate in response to the ringing of the bell even when
there was no meat. This is how Pavlov conditioned the dog to
respond to a learned stimulus.

11. OPERANT CONDITIONING
Operant conditioning is based on the work of B.F. Skinner. It is based on
the premise that behaviour is a function of its consequences.
Individuals emit responses that are rewarded & will not emit responses
that are either not rewarded or are punished. Behaviour is likely to be
repeated if the responses are favourable & it is not likely to be
repeated if the consequeces are unfavourable.
Operant conditioning is a powerful tool for people in the organisations.
Most behaviours in organisations are learned, controlled & altered
by consequences.
Management can use this process to control & influence the behaviour
of employees by manipulating the reward system. Thus, behavioural
consequences that are rewarding increase the rate of response ,
while the aversive consequences decrease the rate of response.

12. COGNITIVE LEARNING
Cognition refers to an individual’s ideas, thoughts, knowledge, interpretations,
understandings, etc about himself & his environment.
The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior
and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of
events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors.

13. SOCIAL LEARNING
• Social learning theory is extension of operant
conditioning
• The view that we can learn through both
observation and direct experience is called social
learning

14. SHAPING BEHAVIOUR
In any organisation, managers are concerned with making then
subordinates learn those behaviours that are most beneficial to the
organisation. When a manager moulds individuals by guiding their
learning, he is shaping behaviour.
THE LAW OF EFFECT :
The operant conditioning is based on the law of effect propounded by
Thorndike. The law states that the behaviour that has rewarding
consequence is likely to be repeated, whereas the behaviour that
leads to negative consequences tends not to be repeated.
Example : If Employees work hard to achieve organisational objectives &
are directly rewarded with bonus , they will tend to repeat their
efforts when new objectives are set.

15. SRATEGIES OF REINFORCEMENT
Reinforcement may be defined as anything that both
increases the strength of response and tends to induce
repetitions of the behaviour that preceded the reinforcement.

17. Positive reinforcement is a reward or other desirable
consequence that follows a particular behaviour or activity. Its
used to increase the frequency of action or behaviour.

19. Negative reinforcement takes place when individuals
learn to escape or avoid from unpleasant
consequences.
For example : people learn to drive carefully to avoid
accidents.

20. PUNISHMENT
Punishment is a means of reducing a desired behavior
by introducing a potentially undesirable
consequence. For e.g. salary cuts, termination, loss
of privileges and layoffs.

21. EXTINCTION
Extinction is an effective method of controlling undesirable behaviour. It
is based on the principle that if a response is not reinforced, it will
eventually disappear.
For example : A disruptive employee who fights & is punished by the
supervisor for doing so may continue the disruptions because of the
attention they bring. By ignoring the employee, attention is withheld &
also the motivation for fighting.

23. Factors Affecting Individual Behaviour
• I. Personal Factors:
• The personal factors which influence the
individual behaviour can be classified into
two categories:
• A. Biographic Characteristics
• B. Learned Characteristics

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