Author: Michael Robinson
One of the concepts that lesson 9 addresses, in the context of team leadership, is social loafing. “Social loafing is a reduction in effort that occurs when individuals do less work because no one person is responsible for the outcome” (PSYCH 485, 2014, p. 4). Essentially, the social loafer is a free rider. The social loafer takes advantage of the fact that, with a team project, something is going to get turned in, and the team will be judged as a whole. So, the social loafer sits back, content to let others do all the work, and then reaps the rewards of merely being associated with those whose contributions were the true driving force behind the project’s success. It has been my experience that a primary cause of social loafing is misaligned incentives. When some of the members of the group have a different vision of what constitutes success than others, the amount of work they are willing to do differs. Those with higher aspirations end up contributing more than those who have their sights set lower. Therefore, one of the best ways to combat social loafing is to make sure that everyone is on the same page from the beginning as to what they hope to accomplish. An example from a group project in an introductory biology class that I took several years ago serves to illustrate this point.
Several years back, at a community college in Georgia that I attended prior to Penn State, I took an introductory biology course as a prerequisite to higher level science courses. One of the requirements of this course was a group project that involved selecting an organism and then presenting a detailed report about that organism to the class. Groups were randomly assigned by the professor, and consisted of about five students each. My group had a mix of students with different aspirations. Three of us (myself included) wanted to do everything in our power to get an A on the assignment, and the other two were content to just pass. This complicated matters and was a source of frustration, because those of us who strove for excellence ended up doing a lot more work on the project than those who did not care.
At the beginning, we discussed division of labor and what we wanted to include in our presentation. Those of us who wanted a quality final product were met with resistance almost immediately. We suggested using multiple scholarly articles from reputable sources and including videos clips and graphics in our presentation. The other two suggested that we watch a National Geographic video on YouTube about our organism and just take notes from it and regurgitate it to the class. When we explained to them why this would not be sufficient, they begrudgingly went along. Eventually we came up with a game plan that the three of us who wanted the best grade possible believed would allow us to achieve it, and we dispersed. Each of us left the meeting with a set of tasks that we were to carry out and report back with at the next meeting, where we would put our final project together.
At the final meeting, where each of us was to bring our work together to compile into the finished product, those of us who took the work seriously were exasperated with what we saw from the other two. While our parts of the project were well researched and well written, it was obvious that the two loafers had not pulled their weight. Their portions of the project were minimally researched and much briefer than those of the other group members. Their submissions also contained multiple spelling and grammatical errors, and their citations were not properly formatted. Since the deadline was looming, we did not have time to make the loafers redo their part of the project, so the three of us who wanted a quality project ended up redoing the sections that the loafers had been assigned in order to bring them up to our standards.
When everything was said and done with, all of us got an A on the final project. Those of us who wanted it and worked hard for it, and those of us who could not have cared less and were content with a C, all got the same grade. The three of us who actually put the work into the project were basically a three person group rather than a five person group, and the two loafers got a higher grade than they deserved while taking it easy over the course of the assignment. The reason that the loafers were tolerated and the professor was not informed of their slacking is because the other group members did not want to say anything that might create animosity in the future since they were going to be taking more classes with these two. They got what they wanted, which was an A, and figured it was best to let bygones be bygones. Furthermore, there really was no mechanism in place to discipline members of the group who were not striving for the same standards as other members. After all, nothing in the course requirements said “you have to make an A on this project.” As long as the other two were putting forth the minimum effort to pass, they were not technically doing anything wrong. Even if the professor had given those of us who worked hard an A and the other two a C, it would not have changed the fact that the loafers did not end up in a worse position than they originally wanted to be in, since they would have been happy with a C. Those of us who wanted an A still had to function as a three person group rather than a five person group, and work much harder than if all five of us had wanted an A.
This example illustrates the importance of having everyone on the team desire the same outcome. Those who do not care about the success of the project will be less likely to take ownership in the project and do their part to make it as successful as possible. Those who end up having to pick up the slack may end up tolerating the loafers in order to avoid future conflict, or because they do not have the heart to say anything to them. This concept is just as applicable to business as it is to academics. For instance, imagine a group of friends who are starting a pizzeria, and three of them have the goal of building a national brand and franchising their restaurants, and the other two are content to remain a local establishment. For a team to work properly, everybody has to be looking in the same direction.
Reference
PSYCH 485: Leadership in work settings. (2014). Lesson 9: Team leadership, 1-15. Retrieved October 23rd, 2014, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych485/002/content/09_lesson/01_page.html
What a great example! It’s too bad that you had to experience this, but it really does put into perspective how social loafing can really cause angst between team members. You are very right that this concept does stretch to other situations such as in work settings as well. I have been on several projects where others do not pull their weight or do their portion of the expected work, which leaves others in charge to find a solution in a short amount of time, which is exhausting! The reasoning behind why this social loafing occurs is also quite interesting. I know in this lesson we discussed having the right vision and the same goals. It is the leaders job in essence to monitor what is happening in the group and be able to make decisions on whether or not action should be taken (Northouse 2013). Unfortunately, in a classroom setting, I can see how that can be difficult to accomplish because the professor is not exactly in it for the same goal that the participants are in for, their goals are different. Maybe the Team Leadership model does not work quite as well in a classroom setting as well as it might work in other team settings because a teacher or professor is not as involved in the team work as others. They are usually only brought in during drastic situations such as someone not doing ANY work on a project or not communicating with others or being blatantly rude and then they come in to triage the situation and leave. Having the same set of expectations and the same goals for each person in the team is essential. I think that the reward structure has a lot to do with it as you said as well. If everyone was graded on their portion of the project, then you would not have had the situation you did, but because it was one grade for all the work accomplished, you had to make up for their slack. Goals, direction and vision is a very big part in creating less social loafing, but reward structure is another part. Both of these together would create much less social loafing, especially in your example.
References
Northouse, P. (2013). Introduction. In Leadership Theory and Practice (Sixth ed.). Sage Publications.