Integral Theory's Four Quadrants Might Make A Good Theory (The Theory of Planned Behavior) Better

Tom Goddard — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:54:33 -0500

I just read an article on promoting health enhancing habits in the workplace by Anshel & Kang in a recent issue of Consulting Psychology Journal. To be frank, this is not the most rigorous of the journals published by the American Psychological Association. Consulting psychologists like myself, I’ve concluded, simply don’t have as much time to dedicate to the refinement of their work. Also, to be frank, a number of the articles seem to be limited to n=1 case studies of the authors’ experience with a single organization. That being said, there is a real-world quality to some of the articles that is missing from the more purely academic, higher-quality journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology.

So I read it. And learn.

What was particularly interesting to me about this one was that the authors sought to influence members of a target audience (employees) to change their behaviors so that they can be both more effective at their jobs and healthier. When doing my doctoral dissertation, I decided to use, as my organizing model for influencing decision-making, Fishbein & Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB).