| The 1980's witnessed a union between behavior analysis and a paradigm in cultural anthropology, known as cultural materialism, which led to the conception of the metacontingency and the field of behavioral anthropology. This field suggests operant organization rests on the relationship between the natural environment and the methods used to obtain resources needed for survival, known as the mode of production. While useful, scientists in this area have overlooked one valuable resource---the laboratory. Using a changing criterion design with six conditions, we manipulated the amount of resources dyads could produce within blocks of five trials. Behavior was contingent on acquiring resources. Token maximization and avoidance of experimental "death" were made contingent on interlocking production behavior. This study found an essential relation regarding resource yield and population maintenance, viz., the number of consecutive unproductive trials cannot exceed the population's storage capacity---1. A tentative research program for organizational behavior, regarding cultural materialism as well as metacontingencies in-and-of themselves, is outlined. |
