Understanding Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

The social cognitive theory which is articulated or developed by Bandura (1986) explains the behavior of humans in three different ways using the dynamic and reciprocal model. It is the concept in which continuous interaction takes place between personal factors, environmental influences, and behavior. It is the concept which states that the group of people learns the actions and rewards others with that positive reinforcement. The basic premise of the theory is that the people learn not only through their own experiences but also by observing the actions that are performed by others and through the results of that action. The principle of behavior modification also arises out through the theory of social cognitive. The self-efficacy theory is considered to be the subset for Bandura's (1986) theory of social cognitive. The reciprocal determinism which is termed as the reciprocal interaction between the person, environment, and behavior is a central concept that arises from social-cognitive theory. Observational learning indicates that people can witness or observe the change in behavior conducted by others and then able to reproduce those actions.

The theory of social cognitive will help analyze the development of humans from a theoretical perspective. The development in humans creates a different classification of patterns of changes. The reinforcement is another key concept of the social-cognitive theory that indicates the internal or external responses that are originated from the person's behavior affects the likelihood of continuing that behavior. But some of the limitations exist in social cognitive theory like it assume that the environment will automatically create the changes among the person and that is not found to be always true. The theory mostly focused on the process that takes place for learning that results in affecting the behavior of a person but it does not include the study of past experiences and expectations (Lin and Chang, 2018). [Referred to Appendix 1]

Russell Hotel is one of the historic buildings that is located in the Russell square and occupied as the hospitality sector. The hotel was brought by the IHG hotel which is a known international hotel chain. The IHG hotel is having a total of 200 employees working across reception, food and beverages, and the sales and operation department. The company IHG decided to rebrand the Russell Hotel as Kimpton hotel. Kimpton is the brand of boutique and environmentally friendly hotels. It results in increasing the frustration of staff as it will result in changing the system and policies and procedures of the workplace. According to the social cognitive theory various factors can impact the behavior as well as actions of the staff after these changes. However, in social cognitive theory the person seems to be neither driven by any inner forces nor automatically shaped by any environment. The person started functioning as the contributor to their motivations and started working on it. The staff of IHG hotels started making faulty judgments based on incomplete information like the rebranding of the hotel might take their job and it leads to incorrect choice (Ng and Lucianetti, 2016). The staff started acting on misconceptions even the owner had assured the job and it makes them behave like foolish in front of others. The staff after listening to the rebranding of the hotel started to debilitate their efforts through self-doubting that they can lose this job once the new policies and system comes into play.

According to the social cognitive theory the people get much influenced by the events they observed if they were unable to remember it. The staff of IHG hotels started creating thoughts like after rebranding they might lose jobs as they will unable to learn a new system and this creates judgmental standards and behavior change in them. According to the concept of Bandura, 1986 the way people started thinking, believing and feeling effects or impact the behavior of them and same occurs in the staff of IHG hotel who also gets tensed and started worried once they realize that the job might get compromised once the rebranding of the hotel will be done. According to the theory there exists an interactive relationship between the personal characteristics and that of the environmental influences (Ozyilmaz et al. 2018). The staff of the IHG hotels also can start discriminating between the caste, age, and religion and it can bring negative capability in between them. Thus once the staff has observed the change without knowing the reason they might start affecting the social environment like behavior with other workers and clients before performing any activity (sphweb.bumc.bu.edu, 2020).

According to one of the discussions in social-cognitive theory the staff of IHG hotel might affect the nature of their experienced environment or workplace in which they worked through the selection or the creation of the situation. The staff gets emotional attachment with the job and thus with thinking of losing they started showing that in behavior. The receptionist of the IHG Hotel started crying in emotion and started showing incapability in her action by complaining about rebranding policy and procedures. Thus the change in behavior of staff of IHG hotels can lead to affect the environment as they will start getting less interested in jobs and not satisfied with the new policy. According to the theory at the personal level, it might require that the individual can cultivate the capabilities to share the self-directedness. It includes the development of the practice of self-regulatory capabilities as well as self-belief. The staff or worker who is working in the IHG hotel started losing the self-belief and thus gets scared or tensed for the job-security. However, some of the staff are excited and understand the importance of changes that will be done by the hotel (Wang et al. 2019). The reception manager of IHG hotels has assured the level of hope in each of the staffs and thus it helps in increasing the self-belief and motivation among the team members. The staff without understanding that rebranding is common in every hospitality sector started creating thoughts in their minds and which results in a lack of self-belief and motivation which is shown through their behavior. The staffs were not ready to understand that even the computer system changes they will get trained and started behaving like they are not capable to do so. The staff of IHG hotel was unable to understand that their effort to be a part of changing policy can be useful to the others or it can impact the behavior of other staff (researchgate.net, 2020). [Referred to Appendix 2]

As a part of the rebranding, the staff of IHG hotel will be trained on the implementation of green policy and also work on a new computer system, but there are few constraints like time, resources and mobility which might limit the situation and created as a barrier to the new knowledge as per the theory of social-cognitive. However, there is some staff in a hotel that through the exercise of forethought motivates them and is invited for the discussion of the long term plan of the company. The stress and the emotional action of the staff show that the staff of the IHG hotel will be less engaged with the activities or procedures that occur in the hotel. It is discussed in the social cognitive theory that it differentiates between the performance as well as the acquisition. It is because people cannot perform everything they learn and all the staff of IHG hotels may also be not able to accurately implement new skills or knowledge. Thus this factor might impact the individual conduct of staff in the IHG Hotel. It can be said from the theory that when the individual is personally happy then they treat others with happiness which states the positive state of affairs, but once they are angry, scared or disturbed then people around them get also suffered The same can happen with the staff of IHG hotel as because of some of the unhappy and scared employee everyone around it can lose the motivation. Thus it can have a dangerous impact on operations of the hotel according to the evidence from the social cognitive theory (uky.edu, 2020).

It can be concluded that the social cognitive theory helps an individual to get knowledge through social interaction or experience from the action of other people. Thus the development of humans is taking place or depending upon the replication of action from one person to other. The action of an individual however helps to sort out the personal as well as environmental experience of them. According to the social cognitive theory it is difficult to learn actually from the social experience of anyone as the action does not always produce the social reaction. The staff of the IHG hotel started getting scared of losing the job and those results in changing the attitude or behavior of them towards the job. Even it can be said through the social cognitive theory that people do not simply react to the immediate environment and rather they think much about the past and some staff gets excited with rebranding of the hotel and started sharing views irrespective of past and present condition.

Reference List

Journal

Lin, H.C. and Chang, C.M., 2018. What motivates health information exchange in social media? The roles of the social cognitive theory and perceived interactivity. Information & Management, 55(6), pp.771-780.

Ng, T.W. and Lucianetti, L., 2016. Within-individual increases in innovative behavior and creative, persuasion, and change self-efficacy over time: A social–cognitive theory perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(1), p.14.

Ozyilmaz, A., Erdogan, B. and Karaeminogullari, A., 2018. Trust in organization as a moderator of the relationship between self‐efficacy and workplace outcomes: A social cognitive theory‐based examination. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91(1), pp.181-204.

Wang, S., Hung, K. and Huang, W.J., 2019. Motivations for entrepreneurship in the tourism and hospitality sector: A social cognitive theory perspective. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 78, pp.78-88.