Behavioral Engineering Model and Worthy Performance

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Thomas Gilbert, "Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance" (1974, 1996, 2007)

Gilbert’s Leisurely Theorem

  • Leisure being a synonym for human capital that is the product of time and opportunity.
    • Human capital is the stock of knowledge, habits, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value, i.e. the economic value of a worker’s experience and skills.
    • The supply of labor: Assume in work (labor) or in leisure are the two ways in which an individual can spend his/her time. Through work, an individual earns income; in leisure, the individual consumes goods. As time worked increases with rise in income till a particular point, after which the workers start preferring leisure to work. Those with more income have a choice to enjoy more leisure. 
  • 1st Leisurely Theorem: Human competence is a function of worthy performance (W), which is a function of the ratio of valuable accomplishments (A) to costly behavior(B). 

    • provides a model of performance
    • Competent people are those who can create valuable results without using excessively costly behavior.
  • 2nd Leisurely Theorem: The potential for improving performance, i.e. PIP, which compares the performance of a “typical” worker against the performance of an “exemplary” worker (a worker with the same job who creates a desirable model level of  accomplishment).  

    • to measure performance deficiency, for the opportunity of improvement
  • 3rd  Leisurely Theorem: The behavior engineering model (BEM), a holistic model, which provides a framework for optimizing environmental support (E) and a person's repertory of behavior (P) in pursuit of worthy performance. Environment supports include information as communication, instrumentation as tools and incentive as motivation.  A person's repertory of behavior includes knowledge is for knowing what to do and how to do; capacity is the adaptability, flexibility and potential, motive as determinants and confidence. 

    • provides methods for improvement, by addressing deficiency in environment or in behavior, which cause the deficiency in performance 
  • 4th  Leisurely Theorem: Different levels of accomplishments, such as the individual level, the team/department level, the organization level, and the societal level.

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