Behaviour modification has been criticized on several grounds, its philosophy, methods and practicality. Because of the strong power of desired consequences, behavior modification may effectively force people to change their behaviour. In this way, it manipulates people and is inconsistent with humanistic assumptions that people want to be autonomous and self actualizing. Some critics do fear that behaviour modification gives too much power to the supervisors/managers and they put the question: who will control the controller?
Likewise, some critics are of the opinion that behaviour modification insults people intelligence. People could be treated like rats in a training box. But infact, people are intelligent, thinking, self-directed and self-controlled individuals who are capable of making their own judgements and choices and motivating themselves. Another limitation is that behavioural modification has limited applicability to complex jobs. For example- it is difficult to identify critical behaviours in the jobs of company lawyer, flight attendants
Behaviour Modification: An Efficacious tool of Shaping… and chief executive officers and reinforce them. This challenge may become more difficult as the economy becomes more and more service based.
Behavioural modification has basically overlooked people’s cognitive (judgment and choice) skills as active participants in the performance process. It has also minimally considered the influence of antecedent’s cues on their behaviour. These limitations have led to the emergence of social learning theory which is a more recent adaption of the behavior modification process.
In spites of the above limitations as indicated by critics, organizations are increasingly applying behavour modification as an efficacious tool of shaping/molding individual behaviour productive and supportive in the attainment of organizational goal.
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