Code of communitarian contingencies:
Behavior Code.
To cooperate for the common good necessarily implies having common objectives, communitarian goals. From the very beginning, Los Horcones has elaborated a list of objectives which served the members as an objective criteria of what behaviors the community promoted (reinforced) among its members and which it didn't (extinguished). Of course, the list can be modified and has been throughout the years, on the basis of what proves to be useful in achieving our common goals.
Initially, the code only described in detail the behaviors considered to be "communitarian" (appropriate to community goals), their rationale and their counterpart or "non-communitarian" behaviors. It prevented us from interpreting our common goals in different or even opposite ways, which could otherwise generate a variety of problems. We called that list "The Behavior Code".
Years later we understood that merely behaving in communitarian ways did not produced lasting changes in members. For example, a member that "cooperates" with someone only when others are watching, or when a coordinator gives the instruction or only when the task will render him or her personal benefits, its not the kind of cooperation that can help the community survive and succeed.
When members behave in appropriate or communitarian ways for the wrong reasons often individualistic reasons, or only in particular circumstances and not always, they have not changed. They have not really learned to behave communitarianly, their repertory is frail. Based on these observations, we added to each behavior of the code, a description of the circumstances in which the behavior is expected to occur and the consequences (reasons) that should maintain it in order to consider it as a communitarian behavior. In other words, we described the whole communitarian contingency and its counterparts. We renamed our code "The Code of Communitarian Contingencies".
Contingency can be defined as the relationship between the antecedent environment (what occurs before the behavior) the behavior (our actions) and what occurs after the behavior (consequences).
Note. The code does not teach members to behave in communitarian ways it just helps them to clearly understand what we refer to by communitarian and non-communitarian behaviors. The procedures to learn communitarian behaviors and reduce non-communitarian behaviors are part of the behavioral self-management programs carried on by each of the members in our everyday life with the aid of those in charge of the behavior area.
Last up-date : 2001
Go back to the Index.