Social Loafers Research Articles

Mediators of the relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance among university student teams

Abstract: Perceived social loafing has been found to be negatively related to team performance. However, far too little attention has been paid to the underlying mechanism of this association. Thepurpose of the present study is to investigate not only the direct relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance but also the indirect relationship between these two variables viamediating roles of the sucker effect/social compensation and social loafer’s continuous social loafing. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 360 students of a public university in Vietnam in 2021. The current study confirmed the previous finding that perceived social loafing could negatively influence team performance. The most striking result to emerge from the data was that the sucker effect had no correlation with any other variables while social compensation and social loafer’s continuous social loafing were two serial mediators in the relationship between perceived social loafing and team performance. Specifically, when students perceived that their teammates engaged in social loafing,they exerted more effort to compensate for the social loafers, this way of reaction made the social loafers continue putting forth less effort and, in consequence, the overall team performance was low.

Investigating Social Loafing in Conducting an Undergraduate Thesis among Student-Researchers in UM Tagum College: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry

Social Loafing pertains to the tendency of a person to exert less effort whenever working in groups compared to working alone. A behaviour dubbed as ‘social cancer’ and can even negatively affect individuals, organizations, and society. There is an apparent lack of studies when it comes to social loafing in the academe. As such, this study was initiated with the following objectives: (1) determine the level of social loafing of student researchers and (2) uncover the lived experiences of student-researchers who encounter social loafing within their groups. The study employed a mixed method, particularly a sequential explanatory design composed of two phases. Phase one involved a quantitative approach wherein a survey was used to collect data from 385 student-researchers. The data showed an overall low level of social loafing among the student-researchers. Phase 2 employed a qualitative approach which selected 14 participants. According to the participants, a sense of regret in group selection was experienced because of their negative experiences with social loafers in their group. Their experience may come across as emotional distress and unfair allocation of tasks. Moreover, participants shared coping strategies with their experience: entertainment immersion, sentiment expression, and establishing agreements. Practical implications as well as future directions were also provided from the study.

How Students' Big Five personality traits manifest in perceived social loafing behavior.

Social loafing (SL) has a detrimental impact on cooperative learning. SL dysfunctionalities are causing more faculty to avoid assigning group projects as part of their course work. This qualitative case study examines how students' personalities are expressed in social loafers' behavior during university-level group assignments at a Texas university. The case study added further depth and breadth to current literature on SL in cooperative learning by exploring the perpetrator's personality expressions. Ten faculty members were interviewed, 32 students were surveyed, and 10 loafers were identified and self-assessed. A qualitative case study was used to provide in-depth investigation of Big Five personality in SL behavior. The faculty interviews and students' surveys revealed that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness were not expressed in SL behavior for university-level group assignments assessed by four IPIP facets. Openness to Experience (values, ideas, actions, and fantasy) was not expressed. Faculty and students indicated that loafers were not curious, barely prepared, with very short attention spans after which they get lost. Social loafers showed no originality, no active imagination, and no deep thinking. Conscientiousness (achievement striving, dutifulness, competence, and order) was not expressed. For Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, some facets were expressed, and others were withheld. The results of this study provide faculty with a multifaceted understanding of students' personality traits to better guide their group interaction and cooperative learning.

Social loafing in group-based learning: student-created and instructor-created group perspectives

PurposeSocial loafing is a key inhibitor in group-based student learning and is a key challenge in administering group-based assessments in higher education. This study examines differences in the effects of antecedents of social loafing (disruptive behaviour, social disconnectedness and apathy) on work quality by comparing student-created and instructor-created groups. The study also investigates how group members' efforts to “pick up the slack” of social loafers in the two kinds of groups moderate the effect of antecedents of social loafing on work quality.Design/methodology/approachPost-graduate students from two different sessions of the Marketing Management unit participated in the study: 95 students from session 1 and 90 students from session 2. One session represented student-created groups and the other session represented instructor-created groups. Each group consisted of five students. Partial Least Square (PLS) estimation using SmartPLS was used to assess the direct and interaction effects.FindingsThe results indicate differences in the effects of the antecedents of social loafing such as apathy and disruptive behaviour on work quality for both student-created and instructor-created groups. Social disconnectedness was found to have no significant effect on work quality. Interestingly, the study found significant differences in the effects of “pick up the slack” on the work quality of student-created and instructor-created groups. Members of student-created groups who picked up the slack of social loafers improved the work quality for unit assessment. This effect was not significant for instructor-created groups.Originality/valueExtant literature on social loafing predominantly focusses on its effect on students' work quality and educational achievement. This study contributes to the literature by investigating how the student-created and instructor-created group members' efforts to pick up the slack of social loafers moderate the effects of the antecedents of social loafing on work quality.

Six Realistic Workplace Classroom Interventions for Management Students

Six classroom interventions designed to continuously teach and acclimate our management students about their eventual realistic reward/punishment contingencies and managerial performance expectations can be established using the classroom’s grading system and the class syllabus. Interventions include (1) using points rather than grades for student evaluation; (2) using a rewards and penalty grading system; (3) rewarding strict, on-time attendance; (4) providing a competitive, points display of students; (5) including penalty procedures to handle social loafers in teamwork settings; and (6) using unannounced quizzes for class preparedness. Research propositions about realistic-based classrooms and students taking these classes are presented.

Member Reactions to Social Loafers When Doing Group-Based Assignments: A Group Processes Perspective

Understanding how student teachers undertake their group work may provide solid foundation for developing essential skills required for the 21st Century teachers, and subsequently help improve group-based assessment in higher education. However, social loafing has been found to interfere with this assessment mode. This article reports on undergraduate student teachers’ reactions to social loafers when working on group assignments as part of their continuous assessment. It focuses on how they go about doing their group work and react to the social loafers. The data were collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews from 18 purposefully and conveniently selected participants. The findings have indicated procedures that students observe in doing their group assignments such as formulation of own group norms and rules, and holding of meetings for the work being determined by the nature of the assignments, and their submission deadlines. Additionally, it has been found that group members employ humanitarian, punitive and threatening approaches as they react to social loafers. The article concludes that proper planning for students’ group assignments is important and; both instructors and students should play their roles accordingly to overcome the problem of social loafing when the use of group-based assessments is indispensable within higher education contexts.

Reaping the Fruits of Another’s Labor: The Role of Moral Meaningfulness, Mindfulness, and Motivation in Social Loafing

Despite the popularity of teams in universities and modern organizations, they are often held back by dishonest actions, social loafing being one of them. Social loafers hide in the crowd and contribute less to the pooled effort of a team, which leads to an unfair division of work. While previous studies have mostly delved into the factors related to the task or the group in an attempt to explain social loafing, this study will instead focus on individual factors. Accordingly, the aim is to investigate the determinants of social loafing attitudes, namely moral meaningfulness and mindfulness in a university setting. We further examine the relationship between attitudes and intentions and introduce the moderating role of motivation in the attitude–intention link. The findings from a sample of 319 business students reveal that both mindfulness and moral meaningfulness are negatively related to loafing attitudes, while attitudes positively predict social loafing intentions. In addition, we find that extrinsic motivation strengthens the relationship between social loafing attitudes and intentions.

Celebrities and slackers: A grounded theory of the dynamics of social loafing on student teams

The purpose of this study was to explore how team members identify the social loafers on their teams and how they explain and manage social loafers’ behavior. The participants (n=49) in the study included members of student teams participating in a service project as a part of their coursework. We collected multiple sources of information: in-depth interviews, reflection journals, peer evaluations, and observations of team members interacting. Using attribution theory and status characteristics theory we describe how team members identify social loafer and explain the causes of their behavior. We also explore how those attributions affect team members’ interactions with the social loafers. The status of social loafers in the eyes of their teammates affects teammates’ willingness to accommodate or reject the social loafer. We identify strategies used by team members to manage the behavior of social loafers. We conclude with recommendations for practice and future research on social loafing.

Evaluation Potential and Task Performance: Evidence From Two Randomized Field Experiments in Election Administration

Individuals behave differently in the presence of others. Some scholars argue the mere presence of others has the capacity to improve task performance, while other researchers demonstrate individuals become “social loafers,” exerting less effort in group tasks unless they perceive potential for evaluation. I investigate these claims in the context of evaluating poll‐worker performance using two randomized field experiments conducted in New York City during a special election that took place in February 2009 and during the presidential primary conducted in April 2016. The results suggest that manipulating the presence of observers, or even poll workers’ perceptions of the potential for evaluation, likely enhances their performance overall, resulting, especially, in greater efficiency and potentially strengthening voters’ confidence that their ballots were accurately counted and diminishing perceptions of electoral fraud.

A New Strategy for Dealing With Social Loafers on the Group Project

Professors often give members of a group project the same grade or they use peer evaluations to provide individualized grades. Unfortunately, both these methods have shortcomings. This article describes the segment manager method (SMM), a method for assigning individualized grades on the group project that does not rely on peer evaluations. A quasi-experiment is described where marketing research students are graded in groups either with peer evaluations (the control group) or with the SMM (the treatment group). Students participating in the quasi-experiment were more likely to prefer the SMM over the approach that uses peer evaluations. Moreover, when the SMM is compared with the peer evaluations approach, the SMM appears to be more likely to generate individualized grades on the group project that reflect each student’s academic ability, to deter social loafing, to increase scores on the group project, and to increase scores on an exam that is heavily loaded with project material. Recommendations for future users of the SMM are offered.

Social Loafers, Free-riders, or Diligent Isolates: Self-Perceptions in Teamwork

Social Loafers, Free-riders, or Diligent Isolates: Self-Perceptions in Teamwork

“I Hate Group Work!” Social Loafers, Indignant Peers, and the Drama of the Classroom

Real-world collaborations aren’t perfect. Learn strategies for structuring positive group interaction in your classroom.

Should I e-collaborate with this group? A multilevel model of usage intentions

The use of online collaboration tools for virtual teamwork has been studied extensively, but mainly at the individual-level. We decided to examine the effect of macro-level factors (i.e., team attributes) and applied hierarchical linear modeling analysis to a sample of data collected from 96 individuals nested in 34 virtual teams. Our results suggested that the development of behavioral e-collaboration intentions by individual virtual team members was affected by their perceptions about the system, as described by individual-level IT use theories, and macro-level factors pertaining to the team. The collaboration technology was perceived to be less useful when employed to communicate with social loafers; and collective social loafing negatively influenced the teams’ potency assessments. After controlling for individual-level perceptions of system usefulness, team potency augmented team members’ intentions to use the online collaboration technology with similar teams. It also improved team performance.

Academic alignment to reduce the presence of ‘social loafers’ and ‘diligent isolates’ in student teams

The acquisition of effective teamwork skills is crucial in all disciplines. Using an interpretive approach, this study investigates collaboration and co-operation in teams of software engineering students. Teams whose members were both homogeneous and heterogeneous in terms of their members' academic abilities, skills and goals were identified and compared. We describe the occurrence of ‘social loafing’, a well-reported phenomenon, in these teams. We also observed a phenomenon which we termed ‘diligent isolation’. Our assumption was that both of these can cause team dysfunction. Additional causes which became apparent during the research are listed. The article includes suggestions for improving team functionality.

Using the Diary Method to Deal With Social Loafers on the Group Project: Its Effects on Peer Evaluations, Group Behavior, and Attitudes

This article reports on the use of group and individual diaries to control social loafing on the group project. Although both forms of the diary were designed to prevent social loafing, neither appeared to do so. An unexpected result of the individual diaries is that they appeared to make the majority of the class, namely the “nonloafers,” more aware of and less tolerant of their loafing partners. Consequently, firings of group members were most likely to occur when individual diaries were used. This article shows how the diary method affects peer evaluations and group behavior, investigates the convergent validity of the individual diary, and summarizes students' attitudes toward the diary method.

Barriers to Deep Learning in Student Marketing Teams

This article reports on a qualitative study of marketing students working in teams over a single semester. The literature on higher education is introduced, and its focus on deep approaches to and outcomes of learning is emphasized. Findings provide descriptions of the struggle for control in student teams, the ineffective ways that social loafers are dealt with, the problems students experience in giving honest feedback to group members, and the possibilities for developing deep level understanding. Recommendations are made for teaching practice in marketing education.

Semi‐autonomous study groups

Many innovations have taken place in the teaching‐learning strategies for organisational behaviour (OB), in the School of Management over the past 18 months. This paper describes the impetus for these changes (i.e. budget pressures) and the search for alternative teaching‐learning strategies suitable for organisational behaviour. It documents the journey of lecturers, part‐time staff and students who took part in this adventure. The change process involved a team of eight full‐time and ten part‐time staff members and over 800 students in a multicultural environment. During the first meeting, students had to negotiate their roles, desirable group norms and the gradations of penalties they would use if these ground rules were not adhered to. Each week the roles of facilitator, facilitator’s buddy, time‐keeper and scribe were rotated. Students learnt to work with “dominators”, “quiet members”, “social loafers”, “poor timekeepers”. Some learnt to confront conflict, others decided to ignore it. Student assignments included a creative learning log and a report describing in depth what they learnt themselves and working in groups and relating their experiences to models and theories of organisational behaviour.