Professor Komaki (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1970) applies the operant conditioning theory of B.F. Skinner to the nimble, back-and-forth exchanges of managers at work. In her Operant Model of Effective Supervision (Komaki, 1998), she seeks to find out what effective leaders really do.   She hypothesized that top-notch managers would provide both positive and negative consequences (feedback), and monitor and gather information about performance.  To test the Model, Komaki and her colleagues and students trekked to worksites and looked at what each manager did and how effective he or she was. Eight studies have confirmed the Model. The time leaders spent monitoring and providing consequences made a difference in every situation, across lines of nationality: with American medical insurance managers, newspaper managers, sailboat skippers, and investment bankers; Finnish construction supervisors and government workers; and Australian police sergeants.   Exemplary managers were quick to comment when employees did well; at the same time, they did not neglect to let persons know where they could improve.   Less intuitively obvious, however, were the findings about seeking out information. Effective managers spent more time monitoring how their employees were doing; they did not jump to hasty conclusions, they asked. Police sergeants asked officers writing reports: "How's it going"? A particular method of monitoring stood out. Top-notch managers sampled the work; they did not find out second hand.   They observed workers in action; they looked at the product. Construction supervisors went to the rooms being tiled and looked at the placement and application of tiles on the walls.   To expand the Model, Komaki and her students at Purdue University have looked at lackluster managers and what they do that differ from their more effective counterparts.   Recently, she and students at Baruch College have demonstrated that managers can be successfully trained to apply the principles of the Model.   Ultimately, she sees the Model as being useful in both the development and selection of managers.

A new area of interest is the development of sophisticated solutions to remedy the pernicious impact of the enslavement and exclusion of African Americans for almost three centuries and the complex problems they have created.   Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act 39 years ago, the standards for judging performance are still vague and shifting. Minorities and women continue to be stereotyped.   Even the most well-meaning raters would have difficulty being fair, given the forms they are asked to fill out with few if any definitions of performance, the sparseness of their training, and, perhaps most important, the utter lack of follow-through to ensure that employees are rated on what matters: their performance. These poor quality evaluations and the stereotyping contribute to biased evaluations of employees, lower-profile assignments, fewer promotions, and lower salaries. Coming of age during the heady, idealistic 60's, Komaki has turned her attention to civil rights.   She has developed a Model of Economic and Social Justice (Komaki, in press) that differs from prevalent diversity efforts in that it is: constructive -- it not only defines what it means to evaluate evenhandedly but it also identifies management practices that ensure that an individual's performance is neither spuriously inflated nor deflated; balanced -- it sets as goals an increase in the representation of women and minorities at elite levels and the evenhandedness of evaluation; and long-term -- it puts into place incentives and sanctions to institutionalize the changes into the fabric of the organization. She is currently implementing the Model in a courageous and far-sighted university.   But she remains actively on the outlook to test, strengthen, and disseminate this Justice Model.   Inquiries are welcome.   Please contact her at:

Judith.Komaki@Baruch.CUNY.edu.

Some representative publications:

On Leadership

Komaki, J. L., Desselles, M. L., & Bowman, E. D. (1989). Definitely not a breeze: Extending an operant model of effective supervision to teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74 , 522-529.

Komaki, J. L. (1998). Leadership from an operant perspective . London : Routledge.   Reissued in 2005.

On Motivation

Komaki, J., Barwick, K. D., & Scott, L. R. (1978).   A behavioral approach to occupational safety:   Pinpointing and reinforcing safety performance in a food manufacturing plant.   Journal of Applied Psychology,63 , 434-445.

Komaki, J. L., Coombs, T., Redding , Jr., T. P., & Schepman, S. (2000). A rich and rigorous examination of applied behavior analysis research in the world of work. In C. L. Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.), International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2000 (pp. 265-367). Sussex , England : John Wiley.

On Performance Appraisal/Economic and Social Justice

Komaki, J. L. (1998). When performance improvement is the goal: A new set of criteria for criteria. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 31 , 263-280.

Komaki, J. L. (in press).   Daring to dream: Promoting social and economic justice at work .   Applied Psychology:   International Review .   Invited lead article to appear in 2007.

Last update: May 2006