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Social Loafing in Projects

2022-03-18T09:29:59Z

S220075: Created page with " Collective work, collaboration, and the exchange between individuals are inherent in our society. Those relations are important in all aspects of life: social and profe..."

Collective work, collaboration, and the exchange between individuals are inherent in our society. Those relations are important in all aspects of life: social and professional; and at an early age, people learn the importance of teamwork. Most companies and institutions rely on teamwork and team effort. Most of the time, this strategy is highly successful, but why do so many people don’t like group working? One of the biggest reasons could be a phenomenon called ''social loafing''.
 
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is the tendency of people to make less effort when working in a group than when working individually <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>. There are many reasons why this happens, one example is that individuals tend to loaf when their performance cannot be evaluated <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>. Many experiments were made during the past decades to investigate why, and in which circumstances social loafing occurs. It is a big challenge to project leaders to avoid this behavior in their teams. How to keep a team motivated? How to make people work collectively keeping up the high efficiency and quality of the work delivered?
 
 
The article will go through some of the experiments made to investigate social loafing, such as the simple rope-pulling task made by Ringelmann in 1913, to a more complex task that requires concentration from the participants; potential causes why individuals don’t give their best when working in a group; and to conclude, some measurements and actions to prevent social loafing to occur. Avoiding social loafing has immense importance to project management because this tendency can be detrimental to a project’s success.
 
 
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== Social loafing ==
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is defined as the reduction of effort and motivation of individuals when working collectively, compared to working by themselves or in coactive work <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>. Coactive work means people having individual tasks within a team setting.
 
 
Our society is based on group work: governments, organizations, sports, etc. And the success of the tasks performed by a group depends on many different factors. A project is usually composed of multiple people with different expertise, therefore good group and project management are crucial, and identifying potential problems, such as social loafing, is extremely important.
 
 
Many psychologists and researchers realized different experiments to understand why people tend to loaf when working in groups, and what could be done better to improve the overall performance of a group. For Latané, Williams, and Harkins, social loafing could be considered a social “disease” for having “negative consequences for individuals, social institutions, and societies” <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
==== Experiments tasks inputs ====
 
Those experiments involved tasks with different inputs that can be classified as <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*'''Types of effort necessary:''' physical, cognitive, perceptual, or evaluative
*'''Difficulty levels:''' simple or complex
*'''Criteria of performance:''' maximizing or optimizing results
*'''Task value for the subjects:''' high or low
*'''Group value:''' close friends, teammates, group cohesiveness, etc.
*'''The expectation of group members performance:''' high or low
*'''Group or Individual evaluation:''' opportunity to get feedback and be individually evaluated
*'''Task uniqueness:''' if all subjects had the same task or different one
*'''Group size'''
*'''Age of the subjects'''
*'''Gender of the subjects'''
*'''Status of the subjects:''' young students, undergraduate students, or companies’ employees
*'''Subjects’ culture:''' Eastern or Western
 
 

==== Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments ====
 
;:'''''A) Pulling-rope experiment'''''
 
: In 1913, a German psychologist called Ringelmann made an experiment involving rope pulling. This experiment was never published but it was described and used in many papers to explain social loafing. The experiment consisted of asking workers to pull a rope as hard they could, and the force was measured by a machine that could tell how many kilograms of pressure they were making when pulling the rope. They expected that the group force would be equivalent to the sum of the individual efforts, but the result was completely different. As the group members increased, the force made by each worker decreased <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
[[File:Pullingrope.jpg|center|500px|thumb|Summary of the results of Ringelmann’s experiment <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.]]
 
: In 1972, Steiner proposed two possible causes of the lower individual performance in Ringelmann’s experiment: loss of motivation or coordination loss <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
 
;:''''' B) Hand clapping and shouting loud'''''
 
[[File:clappingexperiment.jpg|right|280px|thumb|Clapping Experiment Results <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.]]

:: '''First experiment:'''
:: Latané, Williams, and Harkins proposed a new experiment, they evaluated how much sound pressure a group of undergraduate students made when standing alone, in pairs, in groups of 4 and 6. The students were placed in a soundproof room, with a General Radio sound-level meter. The results were similar to Ringelmann’s experiment, as the group increased, the individual performance decreased <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.

:: '''Second experiment - Coordination Loss or Reduced Effort:'''
:: A second experiment using the same task of clapping and cheering was made but with the difference that the participants couldn’t see each other. They were given a blindfold and headsets and asked to do the same thing as the first experiment: cheer and clap as loud as they could. They were told that either one other person will shout with him, or all six were shouting together. On the headset, a recording of people cheering was played so the participants could not evaluate their performance. These actions were made to analyze if the performance drop was due to lack of effort or if it was coordination loss. The procedure change was not enough to eliminate their teamwork feeling, or social loafing <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
: Both experiments, with different methodology, presented the same result: as the group increased, there was a decrease of sound pressure produced per person <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
;:'''''C) Brainstorming and Vigilance task'''''
 
:: '''First experiment - Brainstorming (maximizing results):'''
:: In this experiment performed by Harkins (1987), the participants were divided into singles and pairs. They were instructed to brainstorm as many different uses they could find for a given object (maximizing). Some participants were told that their performances could be evaluated, that everyone had the same object, and others were told that their performances could not be evaluated since it was given a unique object <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
 

<gallery mode=packed-hover widths=200px heights=150px>
File:Singlesevaluataionxnoevaluation.JPG|Results SINGLES: Evaluation X No Evaluation <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>
File:Singlesxcoaction.JPG|Results Coaction X Singles <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>]]
File:Coactionevaluatedxnoevaluationxpooled.JPG|Results COACTION: Evaluated X No Evaluated X Pooled output <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>
</gallery>

:: The results showed that when evaluated, the participants tend to have a better performance in both single and coaction conditions. According to the analysis made by Harkins (1987), the participants in the coaction/pooled output condition felt that their individual performance could not be measured (evaluated), therefore had almost the same result as the coaction/no evaluation condition <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
 
:: '''Second experiment - Vigilance (optimizing results):'''
:: To investigate different criteria of performance, the participants were asked to perform a task involving optimizing the results. The participants were also divided into individual and pairs (coaction), and the task was to report when random signals occurred on a TV screen. Some were told that a computer will track their performance, while others were told that the computer is not working properly, simulating the scenario of evaluation and no evaluation <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.

<gallery mode=packed-hover widths=200px heights=150px>
File:Resultsevaluationxnoevaluation.JPG|Results Evaluation X No Evaluation <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>
File:Resultscoactionxsingleperformance.JPG|Results Coaction X Single performance <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>
</gallery>

:: The results showed that in both experiments evaluation has a great impact on the performance of the participants. On the brainstorming task, they suggested more uses for the given object, and on the vigilance task, they made fewer mistakes. Harkins discusses in the journal about Social Loafing and Social Facilitation, that a plausible reason why coaction (pairs) performance outcome the single’s performance is that working together gave the participants a possibility of self-evaluation, by comparing their performance with his partner <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
 
 
;:'''''D) Integrative Model of individual Effort on Collective Tasks (CEM)'''''
: In 1993, Karau and Williams proposed a method that could predict what key attributes are more valuable in a group, and what would motivate more the individuals in this group. The CEM analyzed and crossed different experiments involving social loafing <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
:'''Conclusions of CEM''' <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*Identifiability only augmented the effort in tasks when individuals thought it was not important or relevant, but in meaningful tasks, it showed no effect at all or even a decrease of effort.
*The individual’s gender, culture, and preferences are very relevant to the group outcome.
*When individual behaviors are dispensable to the outcome of the project, it is less likely to have a high level of effort.
*Good communication within the group members showed to be positive to collective effort when showing the importance of the task, but negative talk has the opposite effect
*Group structure and members’ roles are important to the group effort. Being seen as important in the group, contribute to enhancing the effort made.
 
----

== Causes of Social loafing ==
 
Many studies and experiments tried to identify possible causes of social loafing, and how to avoid it. Even though the experiments have some limitations and are debatable, the following theories are vastly accepted
 
 
*'''Group size''':
: Larger groups have a bigger tendency to loaf. In bigger groups, the individual visibility is smaller, leading individuals to the “hide in the crowd” effect, where individual performance can’t be evaluated so the group members tend to make less effort <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>
 
*'''Evaluation potential''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less when they believe their performance could be evaluated by superiors. This could also be described as "hiding in the crowd" <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref NAME="save5">Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>
 
*'''Task uniqueness''':
: Individuals seem more motivated when working on unique tasks and have a bigger tendency to loaf in redundant tasks <ref NAME="save5">Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Task interdependence''':
: Task interdependence falls on the reduction of the evaluation potential. It is not possible or hard to know who did the task, and this could lead to social loafing <ref NAME="save4">Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Task value''':
: When the task value is high, the group members tend to loaf less. Thus, a high-value task usually leads to a high-value outcome <ref NAME="save5">Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Perceived performance''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less and engage more in the project when they believe that their partners are not contributing enough due to a lack of abilities <ref NAME="save5">Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>. On the other hand, if the individual perceived that their colleagues are engaging in loafing, it is more likely that the individual will also engage in social loafing <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref NAME="save4">Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Group cohesiveness''':
: Groups where members respect each other and have a certain degree of relationship, have a lower chance to engage in social loafing <ref NAME="save4">Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>. Strong group identity is beneficial to diminishing social loafing <ref NAME="save6">Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Reward''':
: Individuals are less likely to put effort and are less motivated when they believe that they are not being perceived by their superiors. The distribution of rewards (this could be monetary, recognition, or anything that will motivate the team) is beneficial to avoid social loafing <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref NAME="save4">Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Stimulation Redunction''':
: In simple tasks, individuals tend to get a better outcome result when working alone, the opposite result was observed in complex tasks. In complex task, the overall performance increases when working in a group <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
----

== Social Loafing remedies ==
 
Most organizations have teams running their projects, and it is a challenge for project managers to build up a good team with high performance. Social loafing in projects is not something unavoidable, but there are some measures and actions that could help diminish it.
 
The leaders have a big role in a project’s success. They can influence their team to work more efficiently by organizing the settings of the operations, setting goals and expectations about the individual and group accomplishments <ref NAME="save6">Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
When building and maintaining a team for a project, some factors can be more influential to avoiding social loafing than others. The following list summarizes those factors <Ref NAME="save2">Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref NAME="SAVE3">Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref NAME="save5">Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref> <ref NAME="save4">Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref NAME="save6">Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
 
*Make smaller groups
 
*A multi-skilled group can be beneficial to avoid social loafing, thus the task interdependence might be smaller
 
*Meaningful tasks
 
*Unique tasks
 
*Individual responsibility for tasks
 
*Group cohesiveness
 
*Working with friends or close team-mates can diminish, but not eliminate social loafing
 
*Frequent feedback about individual and group performance
 
*Monitoring individual and group performance
 
*Defining standards and comparative criteria
 
*Set realistic goals, but also challenging
 
*Motivate individuals, so they feel that their contribution is valuable and important for the project: feeling of belonging
 
*Individual and group rewards: it could be intrinsic (personal achievements, career growth, praises, etc.) or extrinsic (raises, bonus, gifts, etc.)
 
 
----

== Annotated bibliography ==
 
*Gil, Francisco. 2004. ''Social Loafing''. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3:411–19.
This paper focus on briefly explaining what social loafing is, it goes through some of the first experiments investigating social loafing and does a little summary of the main theoretical explanation about the causes of social loafing: Social Impact Theory; Arousal Reduction; Identification and Evaluation Potential; Dispensability of Effort; Self-Efficacy; The Collective Effort Model (CEM); and Other Integrative Models (Instrumentality, Value, and Equality). It also analyzes the implications of social loafing, and which action could be made to avoid or mitigate social loafing.
 
 
*Harkins, Stephen G. 1987. ''Social Loafing and Social Facilitation''. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23.
In this publication, Harkins conduct two experiments to investigate the correlation between Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. The two experiments were designed to include findings from previous experiments in these subjects. The two experiments were conducted on a scenario that the participants’ performance was evaluated or not. The results demonstrated that Social Loafing and Social Facilitation have a correlation. The combination of the study of those two paradigms could lead to a better understanding of both Social Loafing and Social Facilitation.
 
 
*Latane, Bibb, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins. 1979. ''Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing''. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(6):822–32.
This paper goes through two experiments about Social Loafing. People were asked to perform the simple task of clapping and cheering, and results showed that the individual performance in a group decreased a lot compared to when they performed alone. The paper also discusses some of the causes of Social Loafing: Attribution and equality, Submaximal goal setting, Lessened contingency between input and outcome. And they conclude by discussing the consequences for society, and what could be done to minimize Social Loafing.
 
 
*Liden, Robert C., Sandy J. Wayne, Renata A. Jaworski, and Nathan Bennett. 2004. ''Social Loafing: A Field Investigation''. Journal of Management 30(2):285–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jm.2003.02.002.
This journal goes through the definition of Social Loafing, citing some experiments and research made about this topic, and after categorizing the causes of Social Loafing into two categories: the “Individual-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing” and the “Group-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing”. They performed one research involving two companies, their employees, and their direct managers. The research was thorough interviews of employees and managers about their group work performance and comparing the answers of the participants. They conclude that organizations have a crucial role to avoid Social Loafing and made some observations about remedies actions that the organizations could take to avoid this phenomenon.
 
 
*Rutte, Christel G. 2008. ''Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working'' 361–78. doi: 10.1002/9780470696712.CH17
This chapter of the book, International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working, goes through the definition of Social Loafing, giving some examples of experiments made about this topic. The focus of the chapter is on the remedies of Social Loafing at the group level: how to keep the team motivated.
 
 
*Williams, Kipling D., Martin Bourgeois, Donal Carlston, Alice Eagly, Rebecca Henry, Janice Kelly, Norbert Kerr, Brian Mullen, Kristin Sommer, and Steven J. Karau. 1993. ''Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration''.
This paper goes through the definition of Social Loafing and analyses all different experiments. The experiments were categorized and grouped according to the task type, complexity, methodology, Theory-relevant predictors. The Collective Effort Model (CEM) is the result of the meta-analysis of all the experiments. The CEM is a tool to generate predictions regarding the interaction of different triggers of Social Loafing.
 
 

== References ==

<references/>

Articles Spring Term 2022

2022-03-18T09:28:41Z

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|Schmidt
|s213004
|[[Social loafing]]
|-
|-
|Group 22: MuchManage
|Gustav
|Gregersen
|s153930
|[[DMAIC Projects]]
|-
|-
|Group 42
|Simon
|Widmer
|s210449
|[[Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)]]
|-
|-
|Group 17
|Cosmina
|Oltean
|s212409
|[[Team Cohesiveness]]
|-
|-
|Group 12
|Jasmine Riis
|Douglas
|s123367
|[[How stress management improves the effectiveness of the employees]]
|-
|-
|Group 42
|Preetham
|Obla Sampathkumar
|s213604
|[[Root cause analysis (RCA)]]
|-
|-
|Group 4
|Patrick
|Laybourn
|s144993
|[[Robust decision making]]
|-
|-
|Group 6
|Gudrun
|Gudnadottir
|s212950
|[[Risk-based Learning]]
|-
|-
|Group 17
|Andreea Bianca
|Ladaru
|s202438
|[[Lean principles in the construction industry]]
|-
|-
|Group 15
|Lærke Viuff
|Petersen
|s163830
|[[Social Loafing in Teams]]
|-
|-
|Group 15
|Stine Pagaard
|Haahr
|s152100
|[[Conflict Management using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)]]
|-
|-
|Group 42
|Nachanan
|Wongsupakpun
|s210284
|[[Organizational context]]
|-
|-
|Group 33
|Guillermo
|Roig Pitarch
|s212754
|[[Kanban: a project management framework]]
|-
|-
|Group 29
|Magnus
|Leick
|s213818
|[[VUCA]]
|-
|-
|Group 4
|Freja Ejdrup
|Andersen
|s183631
|[[The paradox of project planning from an uncertainty perspective]]
|-
|-
|Group 9
|Nongnapat
|Suksusiang
|s213572
|[[New Product Introduction (NPI)]]
|-
|-
|Group 31
|Eigil
|Vølund
|s183887
|[[Risk Treatment]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Ann Sofie
|Grube Kjeldsen
|s184535
|[[Milestone trend analysis]]
|-
|-
|Group 19
|Qiushi
|Lyu
|s212543
|[[Porter's 5 Forces - A strategic planning model]]
|-
|-
|Group 9
|Qifan
|Wang
|s212500
|[[The Big Five(OCEAN) Personality Traits]]
|-
|-
|Group 12
|Hai
|Hu
|s212360
|[[Kano Model: Introduction and Application]]
|-
|-
|Group 32
|Tobias
|Nielsen
|s220719
|[[Fixed-price contracts]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Hannah
|Nissen
|s184497
|[[Effective teams with Belbin]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Emil Engstrøm
|Bruun
|S180902
|[[Adizes management styles]]
|-
|-
|Group 33
|Raquel
|Galocha
|S212745
|[[Project interdependency mapping]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Emilie
|Rasmussen
|S184532
|[[WBS, Work Breakdown Structure]]
|-
|-
|Group 6
|Telma Sigrún
|Torfadóttir
|S212566
|[[Stress]]
|-
|-
|-
|-
|Group 4
|Erlend Thabiso Rømyhr
|Sehube
|S212426
|[[Risk treatment for renewable energy developers]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Peter
|Birkholm
|S184514
|[[Gantt Chart In Construction]]
|-
|-
|Group 18
|Giacomo
|Branchini
|S212987
|[[Sources of Conflict: Guidelines for a Healthy Organizational Environment]]
|-
|-
|Group 33
|Paula
|González
|S213398
|[[The Big Five (Ocean)]]
|-
|-
|Group 33
|Fernando
|Ramiro Gonzalez
|S214134
|[[MCDA methods in decision making]]
|-
|-
|Group 20
|Magnus Stjernborg
|Koch
|S175189
|[[Project Success and Project Management Success]]
|-
|-
|Group 26
|Katarzyna
|Kukulowicz
|S213042
|[[Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. What does the will to act depend on?]]
|-
|-
|Group 6
|Hildur Lara
|Jonsdottir
|S212410
|[[The Significance of Cohesiveness in Projects]]
|-
|-
|Group 20
|Ziwei
|Chen
|S212635
|[[Stakeholder Identification and Categorization]]
|-
|-
|Group 18
|Raül
|Ciscar
|S217122
|[[Developing a project with the Tuckman's model]]
|-
|-
|Group 18
|Giorgio
|Galasso
|S212985
|[[Risk Assessment: framework for combining CBA and MCDA]]
|-
|-
|Group 33
|Maria Elena
|Igarzabal Saborida
|S213206
|[[Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation]]
|-
|-
|Group 32
|Aikaterini
|Deli
|s212459
|[[The Technique of Value Engineering (VE) in Architecture]]
|-
|-
|Group 08
|Jiajing
|Zhang
|s212412
|[[The Rolling-wave Planning]]
|-
|-
|Group
|Isera Sarah
|Hajaj
|s153540
|[[Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)]]
|-
|Group 50
|Ibrahim
|Nassrallah
|s211254
|[[Brain Storming Technique]]-
|-
|-
|Group 29
|Panagiotis
|Bakas
|s216860
|[[Drexler/Sibbet Model for Team development and project management]]
|-
|-
|Group 20
|Dionysios
|Maroulis
|s212885
|[[Knowns and Unknowns]]
|-
|-
|Group 32
|Gabriela Miti
|Tsuge Costa
|s220075
|[[Social Loafing in Projects]]
|-
|-
|Group 32
|Helená Evin
|Cinar
|s164741
|[[The use of SWOT analysis]]
|-
|-
|Group 3
|Pietro
|Boschetto
|s213928
|[[Enterprise Risk Management]]
|-
|-
|Group 3
|Virginia
|Stinchi
|s213230
|[[The Blake and Mouton's Managerial (Leadership) Grid]]
|-
|-
|Group 32
|César
|Delafargue
|s212834
|[[Design validation]]
|-
|-
|Group 11
|Rune
|Andersen
|s180642
|[[Creating effective teams by means of mathematical modelling]]
|-
|-
|Group Name: 47
|Hannibal
|Danielsen
|s154283
|[[Managing SCRUM]]
|-
|Group 20
|Kunyi
|Yang
|s220027
|[[Wideband Delphi]]
|-
|Group 20
|Haeberle
|François
|s213827
|[[TOC (Theory of Constraints)]]

|-
|Group 3
|Cristiana
|Moraru
|s210219
|[[The strategy choice cascade. Where to play and how to win.]]
|-

|-
|Group 3
|Andrea
|Gatto
|s212974
|[[Emotional Intelligence in a Program, Project and Portfolio Management View]]
|-
|-
|Group 19
|Maria
|Bakali
|s220150
|[[Benefit realization management]]
|-

|-
|Group 20
|Iliana
|Dritsa
|s210373
|[[Risk management in Transport Infrastructure Projects (TIPs).]]
|-

|-
|Group 17
|Stine
|Bonne Rasmussen
|s203168
|[[Robust Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty]]
|-

|-
|Group 4
|Josep
|Comas Stokes
|s212787
|[[Management versus leadership qualities]]
|-

|-
|Group 26
|Almaelisa
|Giovannucci Fernandez
|s220007
|[[Agile in Project Management]]
|-

|-
|Group 47
|Tobias
|Stabrand
|s175082
|[[Ishikawa Diagram]]
|-

|-
|Group 47
|Maria
|Kylafi
|s212860
|[[SWOT Analysis in Construction Projects]]
|-

|-
|Group 42
|Kristoffer Zanchetta
|Klercke
|s183633
|[[Digital Communication in Project Management]]
|-

|-
|Group 26
|Julie
|Nielsen
|s163853
|[[The Eisenhower Decision Matrix]]
|-

|-
|Group 32
|Marco
|Lombardo
|s210384
|[[Agile (adaptive) model]]
|-

|-
|Group 31
|Jacob
|Worsøe
|s176466
|[[Lead, lag and CPM]]
|-

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T15:59:22Z

S220075: /* Annotated bibliography */

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T15:58:51Z

S220075: /* Annotated bibliography */

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T15:44:30Z

S220075: /* Causes of Social loafing */

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T15:28:26Z

2022-03-17T11:28:15Z

S220075:

Collective work, collaboration, and the exchange between individuals are inherent in our society. Those relations are important in all aspects of life: social and professional; and at an early age, people learn the importance of teamwork. Most companies and institutions rely on teamwork and team effort. Most of the time, this strategy is highly successful, but why do so many people don’t like group working? One of the biggest reasons could be a phenomenon called ''social loafing''.
 
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is the tendency of people to make less effort when working in a group than when working individually <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>. There are many reasons why this happens, one example is that individuals tend to loaf when their performance cannot be evaluated <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>. Many experiments were made during the past decades to investigate why, and in which circumstances social loafing occurs. It is a big challenge to project leaders to avoid this behavior in their teams. How to keep a team motivated? How to make people work collectively keeping up the high efficiency and quality of the work delivered?
 
 
The article will go through some of the experiments made to investigate social loafing, such as the simple rope-pulling task made by Ringelmann in 1913, to a more complex task that requires concentration from the participants; probable causes why individuals don’t give their best when working in a group; and to conclude, some measurements and actions to prevent social loafing to occur. Avoiding social loafing has considerable importance to project management because this tendency can be detrimental to a project’s success.
 
 
----

== Social loafing ==
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is defined as the reduction of effort and motivation of individuals when working collectively, compared to working by themselves or in coactive work <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>. Coactive work means people having individual tasks within a team setting.
 
 
Our society is based on group work: governments, organizations, sports, etc. And the success of the tasks performed by a group depends on many different factors. A project is usually composed of multiple people with different expertise, therefore good group and project management are crucial, and identifying possible problems, such as social loafing, is extremely important.
 
 
Many psychologists and researchers realized different experiments to understand why people tend to loaf when working in groups, and what could be done better to improve the overall performance of a group. For Latané, Williams, and Harkins, social loafing could be considered a social “disease” for having “negative consequences for individuals, social institutions, and societies” <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
==== Experiments tasks inputs ====
 
Those experiments involved tasks with different inputs that can be classified as <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*'''Types of effort necessary:''' physical, cognitive, perceptual, or evaluative
*'''Difficulty levels:''' simple or complex
*'''Criteria of performance:''' maximizing or optimizing results
*'''Task value for the subjects:''' high or low
*'''Group value:''' close friends, teammates, group cohesiveness, etc.
*'''The expectation of group members performance:''' high or low
*'''Group or Individual evaluation:''' opportunity to get feedback and be individually evaluated
*'''Task uniqueness:''' if all subjects had the same task or different one
*'''Group size'''
*'''Age of the subjects'''
*'''Gender of the subjects'''
*'''Status of the subjects:''' young students, undergraduate students, or companies’ employees
*'''Subjects’ culture:''' Eastern or Western
 
 

==== Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments ====
 
;:'''''A) Pulling-rope experiment'''''
 
: In 1913, a German psychologist called Ringelmann made an experiment involving rope pulling. This experiment was never published but it was described and used in many papers to explain social loafing. The experiment consisted of asking workers to pull a rope as hard they could, and the force was measured by a machine that could tell how many kilograms of pressure they were making when pulling the rope. They expected that the group force would be equivalent to the sum of the individual efforts, but the result was completely different. As the group members increased, the force made by each worker decreased <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
[[File:Pullingrope.jpg|center|500px|thumb|Summary of the results of Ringelmann’s experiment <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.]]
 
: In 1972, Steiner proposed two possible causes of the lower individual performance in Ringelmann’s experiment: loss of motivation or coordination loss <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
 
;:''''' B) Hand clapping and shouting loud'''''
 
[[File:clappingexperiment.jpg|right|280px|thumb|Clapping Experiment Results <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.]]

:: '''First experiment:'''
:: Latané, Williams, and Harkins proposed a new experiment, they evaluated how much sound pressure a group of undergraduate students made when standing alone, in pairs, in groups of 4 and 6. The students were placed in a soundproof room, with a General Radio sound-level meter. The results were similar to Ringelmann’s experiment, as the group increased, the individual performance decreased <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.

:: '''Second experiment - Coordination Loss or Reduced Effort:'''
:: A second experiment using the same task of clapping and cheering was made but with the difference that the participants couldn’t see each other. They were given a blindfold and headsets and asked to do the same thing as the first experiment: cheer and clap as loud as they could. They were told that either one other person will shout with him, or all six were shouting together. On the headset, a recording of people cheering was played so the participants could not evaluate their performance. These actions were made to analyze if the performance drop was due to lack of effort or if it was coordination loss. The procedure change was not enough to eliminate their teamwork feeling, or social loafing <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
: Both experiments, with different methodology, presented the same result: as the group increased, there was a decrease of sound pressure produced per person <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
;:'''''C) Brainstorming and Vigilance task'''''
 
:: '''First experiment - Brainstorming (maximizing results):'''
:: In this experiment performed by Harkins (1987), the participants were divided into singles and pairs. They were instructed to brainstorm as many different uses they could find for a given object (maximizing). Some participants were told that their performances could be evaluated, that everyone had the same object, and others were told that their performances could not be evaluated since it was given a unique object<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that when evaluated, the participants tend to have a better performance in both single and coaction conditions. According to the analysis made by Harkins (1987), the participants in the coaction/pooled output condition felt that their individual performance could not be measured (evaluated), therefore had almost the same result as the coaction/no evaluation condition<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
:: '''Second experiment - Vigilance (optimizing results):'''
:: To investigate different criteria of performance, the participants were asked to perform a task involving optimizing the results. The participants were also divided into individual and pairs (coaction), and the task was to report when random signals occurred on a TV screen. Some were told that a computer will track their performance, while others were told that the computer is not working properly, simulating the scenario of evaluation and no evaluation<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that in both experiments evaluation has a great impact on the performance of the participants. On the brainstorming task, they suggested more uses for the given object, and on the vigilance task, they made fewer mistakes. Harkins discusses in the journal about Social Loafing and Social Facilitation, that a plausible reason why coaction (pairs) performance outcome the single’s performance is that working together gave the participants a possibility of self-evaluation, by comparing their performance with his partner<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
 
;:'''''D) Integrative Model of individual Effort on Collective Tasks (CEM)'''''
: In 1993, Karau and Williams proposed a method that could predict what key attributes are more valuable in a group, and what would motivate more the individuals in this group. The CEM analyzed and crossed different experiments involving social loafing<ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
: Conclusions of CEM <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*Identifiability only augmented the effort in tasks when individuals thought it was not important or relevant, but in meaningful tasks, it showed no effect at all or even a decrease of effort.
*The individual’s gender, culture, and preferences are very relevant to the group outcome.
*When individual behaviors are dispensable to the outcome of the project, it is less likely to have a high level of effort.
*Good communication within the group members showed to be positive to collective effort when showing the importance of the task, but negative talk has the opposite effect.
*Group structure and members’ roles are important to the group effort. Being seen as important in the group, contribute to enhancing the effort made.
 
----

== Causes of Social loafing ==
 
Many studies and experiments tried to identify possible causes of social loafing, and how to avoid it. Even though the experiments have some limitations and are debatable, the following theories are vastly accepted
 
 
*'''Group size''':
: Larger groups have a bigger tendency to loaf. In bigger groups, the individual visibility is smaller, leading individuals to the “hide in the crowd” effect, where individual performance can’t be evaluated so the group members tend to make less effort <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>
 
*'''Evaluation potential''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less when they believe their performance could be evaluated by superiors <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>
 
*'''Task uniqueness''':
: Individuals seem more motivated when working on unique tasks and have a bigger tendency to loaf in redundant tasks <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Task interdependence''':
: Task interdependence falls on the reduction of the evaluation potential. It is not possible or hard to know who did the task, and this could lead to social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Task value''':
: When the task value is high, the group members tend to loaf less. Thus, a high-value task usually leads to a high-value outcome <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Perceived performance''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less and engage more in the project when they believe that their partners are not contributing enough due to a lack of abilities <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>. On the other hand, if the individual perceived that their colleagues are engaging in loafing, it is more likely that the individual will also engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
*'''Group cohesiveness''':
: Groups where members respect each other and have a certain degree of relationship, have a lower chance to engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>. Strong group identity is beneficial to diminishing social loafing <ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Reward''':
: Individuals are less likely to put effort and are less motivated when they believe that they are not being perceived by their superiors. The distribution of rewards (this could be monetary, recognition, or anything that will motivate the team) is beneficial to avoid social loafing <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Stimulation Redunction''':
: In simple tasks, individuals tend to get a better outcome result when working alone, the opposite result was observed in complex tasks. In complex task, the overall performance increases when working in a group <ref NAME="save1">Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
----

== Social Loafing remedies ==
 
Most organizations have teams running their projects, and it is a challenge for project managers to build up a good team with high performance. Social loafing in projects is not something unavoidable, but there are some measures and actions that could help diminish it.
 
The leaders have a big role in a project’s success. They can influence their team to work more efficiently by organizing the settings of the operations, setting goals and expectations about the individual and group accomplishments <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
When building and maintaining a team for a project, some factors can be more influential to avoiding social loafing than others. The following list summarizes those factors <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref> <ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
 
*Make smaller groups
 
*A multi-skilled group can be beneficial to avoid social loafing, thus the task interdependence might be smaller
 
*Meaningful tasks
 
*Unique tasks
 
*Individual responsibility for tasks
 
*Group cohesiveness
 
*Working with friends or close team-mates can diminish, but not eliminate social loafing
 
*Frequent feedback about individual and group performance
 
*Monitoring individual and group performance
 
*Defining standards and comparative criteria
 
*Set realistic goals, but also challenging
 
*Motivate individuals, so they feel that their contribution is valuable and important for the project: feeling of belonging
 
*Individual and group rewards: it could be intrinsic (personal achievements, career growth, praises, etc.) or extrinsic (raises, bonus, gifts, etc.)
 
 
----

== Annotated bibliography ==
 
*Gil, Francisco. 2004. ''Social Loafing''. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3:411–19.
This paper focus on briefly explaining what social loafing is, it goes through some of the first experiments investigating social loafing and does a little summary of the main theoretical explanation about the causes of social loafing: Social Impact Theory; Arousal Reduction; Identification and Evaluation Potential; Dispensability of Effort; Self-Efficacy; The Collective Effort Model (CEM); and Other Integrative Models (Instrumentality, Value, and Equality). It also analyzes the implications of social loafing, and which action could be made to avoid or mitigate social loafing.
 
 
*Harkins, Stephen G. 1987. ''Social Loafing and Social Facilitation''. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23.
In this publication, Harkins conduct two experiments to investigate the correlation between Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. The two experiments were designed to include findings from previous experiments in these subjects. The two experiments were conducted on a scenario that the participants’ performance was evaluated or not. The results demonstrated that Social Loafing and Social Facilitation have a correlation. The combination of the study of those two paradigms could lead to a better understanding of both Social Loafing and Social Facilitation.
 
 
*Latane, Bibb, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins. 1979. ''Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing''. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(6):822–32.
This paper goes through two experiments about Social Loafing. People were asked to perform the simple task of clapping and cheering, and results showed that the individual performance in a group decreased a lot compared to when they performed alone. The paper also discusses some of the causes of Social Loafing: Attribution and equality, Submaximal goal setting, Lessened contingency between input and outcome. And they conclude by discussing the consequences for society, and what could be done to minimize Social Loafing.
 
 
*Liden, Robert C., Sandy J. Wayne, Renata A. Jaworski, and Nathan Bennett. 2004. ''Social Loafing: A Field Investigation''. Journal of Management 30(2):285–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jm.2003.02.002.
This journal goes through the definition of Social Loafing, citing some experiments and research made about this topic, and after categorizing the causes of Social Loafing into two categories: the “Individual-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing” and the “Group-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing”. They performed one research involving two companies, their employees, and their direct managers. The research was thorough interviews of employees and managers about their group work performance and comparing the answers of the participants. They conclude that organizations have a crucial role to avoid Social Loafing and made some observations about remedies actions that the organizations could take to avoid this phenomenon.
 
 
*Rutte, Christel G. 2008. ''Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working'' 361–78. doi: 10.1002/9780470696712.CH17
This chapter of the book, International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working, goes through the definition of Social Loafing, giving some examples of experiments made about this topic. The focus of the chapter is on the remedies of Social Loafing at the group level: how to keep the team motivated.
 
 
*Williams, Kipling D., Martin Bourgeois, Donal Carlston, Alice Eagly, Rebecca Henry, Janice Kelly, Norbert Kerr, Brian Mullen, Kristin Sommer, and Steven J. Karau. 1993. ''Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration''.
This paper goes through the definition of Social Loafing and analyses all different experiments. The experiments were categorized and grouped according to the task type, complexity, methodology, Theory-relevant predictors. The Collective Effort Model (CEM) is the result of the meta-analysis of all the experiments. The CEM is a tool to generate predictions regarding the interaction of different triggers of Social Loafing.
 
 

== References ==

<references/>

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T10:26:07Z

S220075: /* Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments */

Collective work, collaboration, and the exchange between individuals are inherent in our society. Those relations are important in all aspects of life: social and professional; and at an early age, people learn the importance of teamwork. Most companies and institutions rely on teamwork and team effort. Most of the time, this strategy is highly successful, but why do so many people don’t like group working? One of the biggest reasons could be a phenomenon called ''social loafing''.
 
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is the tendency of people to make less effort when working in a group than when working individually <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>. There are many reasons why this happens, one example is that individuals tend to loaf when their performance cannot be evaluated <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>. Many experiments were made during the past decades to investigate why, and in which circumstances social loafing occurs. It is a big challenge to project leaders to avoid this behavior in their teams. How to keep a team motivated? How to make people work collectively keeping up the high efficiency and quality of the work delivered?
 
 
The article will go through some of the experiments made to investigate social loafing, such as the simple rope-pulling task made by Ringelmann in 1913, to a more complex task that requires concentration from the participants; probable causes why individuals don’t give their best when working in a group; and to conclude, some measurements and actions to prevent social loafing to occur. Avoiding social loafing has considerable importance to project management because this tendency can be detrimental to a project’s success.
 
 
----

== Social loafing ==
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is defined as the reduction of effort and motivation of individuals when working collectively, compared to working by themselves or in coactive work <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>. Coactive work means people having individual tasks within a team setting.
 
 
Our society is based on group work: governments, organizations, sports, etc. And the success of the tasks performed by a group depends on many different factors. A project is usually composed of multiple people with different expertise, therefore good group and project management are crucial, and identifying possible problems, such as social loafing, is extremely important.
 
 
Many psychologists and researchers realized different experiments to understand why people tend to loaf when working in groups, and what could be done better to improve the overall performance of a group. For Latané, Williams, and Harkins, social loafing could be considered a social “disease” for having “negative consequences for individuals, social institutions, and societies” <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
==== Experiments tasks inputs ====
 
Those experiments involved tasks with different inputs that can be classified as <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*'''Types of effort necessary:''' physical, cognitive, perceptual, or evaluative
*'''Difficulty levels:''' simple or complex
*'''Criteria of performance:''' maximizing or optimizing results
*'''Task value for the subjects:''' high or low
*'''Group value:''' close friends, teammates, group cohesiveness, etc.
*'''The expectation of group members performance:''' high or low
*'''Group or Individual evaluation:''' opportunity to get feedback and be individually evaluated
*'''Task uniqueness:''' if all subjects had the same task or different one
*'''Group size'''
*'''Age of the subjects'''
*'''Gender of the subjects'''
*'''Status of the subjects:''' young students, undergraduate students, or companies’ employees
*'''Subjects’ culture:''' Eastern or Western
 
 

==== Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments ====
 
;:'''''A) Pulling-rope experiment'''''
 
: In 1913, a German psychologist called Ringelmann made an experiment involving rope pulling. This experiment was never published but it was described and used in many papers to explain social loafing. The experiment consisted of asking workers to pull a rope as hard they could, and the force was measured by a machine that could tell how many kilograms of pressure they were making when pulling the rope. They expected that the group force would be equivalent to the sum of the individual efforts, but the result was completely different. As the group members increased, the force made by each worker decreased <ref NAME= Many hands make light the work>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
[[File:Pullingrope.jpg|center|500px|thumb|Summary of the results of Ringelmann’s experiment <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.]]
: In 1972, Steiner proposed two possible causes of the lower individual performance in Ringelmann’s experiment: loss of motivation or coordination loss <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
 
;:''''' B) Hand clapping and shouting loud'''''
 
[[File:clappingexperiment.jpg|right|280px|thumb|Clapping Experiment Results <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.]]

:: '''First experiment:'''
:: Latané, Williams, and Harkins proposed a new experiment, they evaluated how much sound pressure a group of undergraduate students made when standing alone, in pairs, in groups of 4 and 6. The students were placed in a soundproof room, with a General Radio sound-level meter. The results were similar to Ringelmann’s experiment, as the group increased, the individual performance decreased <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
:: '''Second experiment - Coordination Loss or Reduced Effort:'''
:: A second experiment using the same task of clapping and cheering was made but with the difference that the participants couldn’t see each other. They were given a blindfold and headsets and asked to do the same thing as the first experiment: cheer and clap as loud as they could. They were told that either one other person will shout with him, or all six were shouting together. On the headset, a recording of people cheering was played so the participants could not evaluate their performance. These actions were made to analyze if the performance drop was due to lack of effort or if it was coordination loss. The procedure change was not enough to eliminate their teamwork feeling, or social loafing <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
: Both experiments, with different methodology, presented the same result: as the group increased, there was a decrease of sound pressure produced per person <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
;:'''''C) Brainstorming and Vigilance task'''''
 
:: '''First experiment - Brainstorming (maximizing results):'''
:: In this experiment performed by Harkins (1987), the participants were divided into singles and pairs. They were instructed to brainstorm as many different uses they could find for a given object (maximizing). Some participants were told that their performances could be evaluated, that everyone had the same object, and others were told that their performances could not be evaluated since it was given a unique object<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that when evaluated, the participants tend to have a better performance in both single and coaction conditions. According to the analysis made by Harkins (1987), the participants in the coaction/pooled output condition felt that their individual performance could not be measured (evaluated), therefore had almost the same result as the coaction/no evaluation condition<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
:: '''Second experiment - Vigilance (optimizing results):'''
:: To investigate different criteria of performance, the participants were asked to perform a task involving optimizing the results. The participants were also divided into individual and pairs (coaction), and the task was to report when random signals occurred on a TV screen. Some were told that a computer will track their performance, while others were told that the computer is not working properly, simulating the scenario of evaluation and no evaluation<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that in both experiments evaluation has a great impact on the performance of the participants. On the brainstorming task, they suggested more uses for the given object, and on the vigilance task, they made fewer mistakes. Harkins discusses in the journal about Social Loafing and Social Facilitation, that a plausible reason why coaction (pairs) performance outcome the single’s performance is that working together gave the participants a possibility of self-evaluation, by comparing their performance with his partner<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
 
;:'''''D) Integrative Model of individual Effort on Collective Tasks (CEM)'''''
: In 1993, Karau and Williams proposed a method that could predict what key attributes are more valuable in a group, and what would motivate more the individuals in this group. The CEM analyzed and crossed different experiments involving social loafing<ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
: Conclusions of CEM <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*Identifiability only augmented the effort in tasks when individuals thought it was not important or relevant, but in meaningful tasks, it showed no effect at all or even a decrease of effort.
*The individual’s gender, culture, and preferences are very relevant to the group outcome.
*When individual behaviors are dispensable to the outcome of the project, it is less likely to have a high level of effort.
*Good communication within the group members showed to be positive to collective effort when showing the importance of the task, but negative talk has the opposite effect.
*Group structure and members’ roles are important to the group effort. Being seen as important in the group, contribute to enhancing the effort made.
 
----

== Causes of Social loafing ==
 
Many studies and experiments tried to identify possible causes of social loafing, and how to avoid it. Even though the experiments have some limitations and are debatable, the following theories are vastly accepted
 
 
*'''Group size''':
: Larger groups have a bigger tendency to loaf. In bigger groups, the individual visibility is smaller, leading individuals to the “hide in the crowd” effect, where individual performance can’t be evaluated so the group members tend to make less effort <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>
 
*'''Evaluation potential''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less when they believe their performance could be evaluated by superiors <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>
 
*'''Task uniqueness''':
: Individuals seem more motivated when working on unique tasks and have a bigger tendency to loaf in redundant tasks <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Task interdependence''':
: Task interdependence falls on the reduction of the evaluation potential. It is not possible or hard to know who did the task, and this could lead to social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Task value''':
: When the task value is high, the group members tend to loaf less. Thus, a high-value task usually leads to a high-value outcome <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Perceived performance''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less and engage more in the project when they believe that their partners are not contributing enough due to a lack of abilities <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>. On the other hand, if the individual perceived that their colleagues are engaging in loafing, it is more likely that the individual will also engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
*'''Group cohesiveness''':
: Groups where members respect each other and have a certain degree of relationship, have a lower chance to engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>. Strong group identity is beneficial to diminishing social loafing <ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Reward''':
: Individuals are less likely to put effort and are less motivated when they believe that they are not being perceived by their superiors. The distribution of rewards (this could be monetary, recognition, or anything that will motivate the team) is beneficial to avoid social loafing <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Stimulation Redunction''':
: In simple tasks, individuals tend to get a better outcome result when working alone, the opposite result was observed in complex tasks. In complex task, the overall performance increases when working in a group <Ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
----

== Social Loafing remedies ==
 
Most organizations have teams running their projects, and it is a challenge for project managers to build up a good team with high performance. Social loafing in projects is not something unavoidable, but there are some measures and actions that could help diminish it.
 
The leaders have a big role in a project’s success. They can influence their team to work more efficiently by organizing the settings of the operations, setting goals and expectations about the individual and group accomplishments <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
When building and maintaining a team for a project, some factors can be more influential to avoiding social loafing than others. The following list summarizes those factors <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref> <ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
 
*Make smaller groups
 
*A multi-skilled group can be beneficial to avoid social loafing, thus the task interdependence might be smaller
 
*Meaningful tasks
 
*Unique tasks
 
*Individual responsibility for tasks
 
*Group cohesiveness
 
*Working with friends or close team-mates can diminish, but not eliminate social loafing
 
*Frequent feedback about individual and group performance
 
*Monitoring individual and group performance
 
*Defining standards and comparative criteria
 
*Set realistic goals, but also challenging
 
*Motivate individuals, so they feel that their contribution is valuable and important for the project: feeling of belonging
 
*Individual and group rewards: it could be intrinsic (personal achievements, career growth, praises, etc.) or extrinsic (raises, bonus, gifts, etc.)
 
 
----

== Annotated bibliography ==
 
*Gil, Francisco. 2004. ''Social Loafing''. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3:411–19.
This paper focus on briefly explaining what social loafing is, it goes through some of the first experiments investigating social loafing and does a little summary of the main theoretical explanation about the causes of social loafing: Social Impact Theory; Arousal Reduction; Identification and Evaluation Potential; Dispensability of Effort; Self-Efficacy; The Collective Effort Model (CEM); and Other Integrative Models (Instrumentality, Value, and Equality). It also analyzes the implications of social loafing, and which action could be made to avoid or mitigate social loafing.
 
 
*Harkins, Stephen G. 1987. ''Social Loafing and Social Facilitation''. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23.
In this publication, Harkins conduct two experiments to investigate the correlation between Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. The two experiments were designed to include findings from previous experiments in these subjects. The two experiments were conducted on a scenario that the participants’ performance was evaluated or not. The results demonstrated that Social Loafing and Social Facilitation have a correlation. The combination of the study of those two paradigms could lead to a better understanding of both Social Loafing and Social Facilitation.
 
 
*Latane, Bibb, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins. 1979. ''Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing''. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(6):822–32.
This paper goes through two experiments about Social Loafing. People were asked to perform the simple task of clapping and cheering, and results showed that the individual performance in a group decreased a lot compared to when they performed alone. The paper also discusses some of the causes of Social Loafing: Attribution and equality, Submaximal goal setting, Lessened contingency between input and outcome. And they conclude by discussing the consequences for society, and what could be done to minimize Social Loafing.
 
 
*Liden, Robert C., Sandy J. Wayne, Renata A. Jaworski, and Nathan Bennett. 2004. ''Social Loafing: A Field Investigation''. Journal of Management 30(2):285–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jm.2003.02.002.
This journal goes through the definition of Social Loafing, citing some experiments and research made about this topic, and after categorizing the causes of Social Loafing into two categories: the “Individual-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing” and the “Group-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing”. They performed one research involving two companies, their employees, and their direct managers. The research was thorough interviews of employees and managers about their group work performance and comparing the answers of the participants. They conclude that organizations have a crucial role to avoid Social Loafing and made some observations about remedies actions that the organizations could take to avoid this phenomenon.
 
 
*Rutte, Christel G. 2008. ''Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working'' 361–78. doi: 10.1002/9780470696712.CH17
This chapter of the book, International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working, goes through the definition of Social Loafing, giving some examples of experiments made about this topic. The focus of the chapter is on the remedies of Social Loafing at the group level: how to keep the team motivated.
 
 
*Williams, Kipling D., Martin Bourgeois, Donal Carlston, Alice Eagly, Rebecca Henry, Janice Kelly, Norbert Kerr, Brian Mullen, Kristin Sommer, and Steven J. Karau. 1993. ''Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration''.
This paper goes through the definition of Social Loafing and analyses all different experiments. The experiments were categorized and grouped according to the task type, complexity, methodology, Theory-relevant predictors. The Collective Effort Model (CEM) is the result of the meta-analysis of all the experiments. The CEM is a tool to generate predictions regarding the interaction of different triggers of Social Loafing.
 
 

== References ==

<references/>

File:Pullingrope.jpg

2022-03-17T10:19:09Z

S220075:

Project loafing in Projects

2022-03-17T10:05:19Z

S220075: /* Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments */

Collective work, collaboration, and the exchange between individuals are inherent in our society. Those relations are important in all aspects of life: social and professional; and at an early age, people learn the importance of teamwork. Most companies and institutions rely on teamwork and team effort. Most of the time, this strategy is highly successful, but why do so many people don’t like group working? One of the biggest reasons could be a phenomenon called ''social loafing''.
 
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is the tendency of people to make less effort when working in a group than when working individually <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>. There are many reasons why this happens, one example is that individuals tend to loaf when their performance cannot be evaluated <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>. Many experiments were made during the past decades to investigate why, and in which circumstances social loafing occurs. It is a big challenge to project leaders to avoid this behavior in their teams. How to keep a team motivated? How to make people work collectively keeping up the high efficiency and quality of the work delivered?
 
 
The article will go through some of the experiments made to investigate social loafing, such as the simple rope-pulling task made by Ringelmann in 1913, to a more complex task that requires concentration from the participants; probable causes why individuals don’t give their best when working in a group; and to conclude, some measurements and actions to prevent social loafing to occur. Avoiding social loafing has considerable importance to project management because this tendency can be detrimental to a project’s success.
 
 
----

== Social loafing ==
 
'''''Social loafing''''' is defined as the reduction of effort and motivation of individuals when working collectively, compared to working by themselves or in coactive work <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>. Coactive work means people having individual tasks within a team setting.
 
 
Our society is based on group work: governments, organizations, sports, etc. And the success of the tasks performed by a group depends on many different factors. A project is usually composed of multiple people with different expertise, therefore good group and project management are crucial, and identifying possible problems, such as social loafing, is extremely important.
 
 
Many psychologists and researchers realized different experiments to understand why people tend to loaf when working in groups, and what could be done better to improve the overall performance of a group. For Latané, Williams, and Harkins, social loafing could be considered a social “disease” for having “negative consequences for individuals, social institutions, and societies” <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
==== Experiments tasks inputs ====
 
Those experiments involved tasks with different inputs that can be classified as <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*'''Types of effort necessary:''' physical, cognitive, perceptual, or evaluative
*'''Difficulty levels:''' simple or complex
*'''Criteria of performance:''' maximizing or optimizing results
*'''Task value for the subjects:''' high or low
*'''Group value:''' close friends, teammates, group cohesiveness, etc.
*'''The expectation of group members performance:''' high or low
*'''Group or Individual evaluation:''' opportunity to get feedback and be individually evaluated
*'''Task uniqueness:''' if all subjects had the same task or different one
*'''Group size'''
*'''Age of the subjects'''
*'''Gender of the subjects'''
*'''Status of the subjects:''' young students, undergraduate students, or companies’ employees
*'''Subjects’ culture:''' Eastern or Western
 
 

==== Investigating social loafing: examples of experiments ====
 
;:'''''A) Pulling-rope experiment'''''
 
: In 1913, a German psychologist called Ringelmann made an experiment involving rope pulling. This experiment was never published but it was described and used in many papers to explain social loafing. The experiment consisted of asking workers to pull a rope as hard they could, and the force was measured by a machine that could tell how many kilograms of pressure they were making when pulling the rope. They expected that the group force would be equivalent to the sum of the individual efforts, but the result was completely different. As the group members increased, the force made by each worker decreased <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
: In 1972, Steiner proposed two possible causes of the lower individual performance in Ringelmann’s experiment: loss of motivation or coordination loss <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
 
;:''''' B) Hand clapping and shouting loud'''''
 
[[File:clappingexperiment.jpg|right|350px]]

:: '''First experiment:'''
:: Latané, Williams, and Harkins proposed a new experiment, they evaluated how much sound pressure a group of undergraduate students made when standing alone, in pairs, in groups of 4 and 6. The students were placed in a soundproof room, with a General Radio sound-level meter. The results were similar to Ringelmann’s experiment, as the group increased, the individual performance decreased <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
:: '''Second experiment - Coordination Loss or Reduced Effort:'''
:: A second experiment using the same task of clapping and cheering was made but with the difference that the participants couldn’t see each other. They were given a blindfold and headsets and asked to do the same thing as the first experiment: cheer and clap as loud as they could. They were told that either one other person will shout with him, or all six were shouting together. On the headset, a recording of people cheering was played so the participants could not evaluate their performance. These actions were made to analyze if the performance drop was due to lack of effort or if it was coordination loss. The procedure change was not enough to eliminate their teamwork feeling, or social loafing <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
: Both experiments, with different methodology, presented the same result: as the group increased, there was a decrease of sound pressure produced per person <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref>.
 
 
;:'''''C) Brainstorming and Vigilance task'''''
 
:: '''First experiment - Brainstorming (maximizing results):'''
:: In this experiment performed by Harkins (1987), the participants were divided into singles and pairs. They were instructed to brainstorm as many different uses they could find for a given object (maximizing). Some participants were told that their performances could be evaluated, that everyone had the same object, and others were told that their performances could not be evaluated since it was given a unique object<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that when evaluated, the participants tend to have a better performance in both single and coaction conditions. According to the analysis made by Harkins (1987), the participants in the coaction/pooled output condition felt that their individual performance could not be measured (evaluated), therefore had almost the same result as the coaction/no evaluation condition<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
:: '''Second experiment - Vigilance (optimizing results):'''
:: To investigate different criteria of performance, the participants were asked to perform a task involving optimizing the results. The participants were also divided into individual and pairs (coaction), and the task was to report when random signals occurred on a TV screen. Some were told that a computer will track their performance, while others were told that the computer is not working properly, simulating the scenario of evaluation and no evaluation<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>.
:: The results showed that in both experiments evaluation has a great impact on the performance of the participants. On the brainstorming task, they suggested more uses for the given object, and on the vigilance task, they made fewer mistakes. Harkins discusses in the journal about Social Loafing and Social Facilitation, that a plausible reason why coaction (pairs) performance outcome the single’s performance is that working together gave the participants a possibility of self-evaluation, by comparing their performance with his partner<ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref>..
 
 
;:'''''D) Integrative Model of individual Effort on Collective Tasks (CEM)'''''
: In 1993, Karau and Williams proposed a method that could predict what key attributes are more valuable in a group, and what would motivate more the individuals in this group. The CEM analyzed and crossed different experiments involving social loafing<ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
: Conclusions of CEM <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>:
 
*Identifiability only augmented the effort in tasks when individuals thought it was not important or relevant, but in meaningful tasks, it showed no effect at all or even a decrease of effort.
*The individual’s gender, culture, and preferences are very relevant to the group outcome.
*When individual behaviors are dispensable to the outcome of the project, it is less likely to have a high level of effort.
*Good communication within the group members showed to be positive to collective effort when showing the importance of the task, but negative talk has the opposite effect.
*Group structure and members’ roles are important to the group effort. Being seen as important in the group, contribute to enhancing the effort made.
 
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== Causes of Social loafing ==
 
Many studies and experiments tried to identify possible causes of social loafing, and how to avoid it. Even though the experiments have some limitations and are debatable, the following theories are vastly accepted
 
 
*'''Group size''':
: Larger groups have a bigger tendency to loaf. In bigger groups, the individual visibility is smaller, leading individuals to the “hide in the crowd” effect, where individual performance can’t be evaluated so the group members tend to make less effort <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>
 
*'''Evaluation potential''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less when they believe their performance could be evaluated by superiors <Ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>
 
*'''Task uniqueness''':
: Individuals seem more motivated when working on unique tasks and have a bigger tendency to loaf in redundant tasks <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Task interdependence''':
: Task interdependence falls on the reduction of the evaluation potential. It is not possible or hard to know who did the task, and this could lead to social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Task value''':
: When the task value is high, the group members tend to loaf less. Thus, a high-value task usually leads to a high-value outcome <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
*'''Perceived performance''':
: Individuals tend to loaf less and engage more in the project when they believe that their partners are not contributing enough due to a lack of abilities <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>. On the other hand, if the individual perceived that their colleagues are engaging in loafing, it is more likely that the individual will also engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
*'''Group cohesiveness''':
: Groups where members respect each other and have a certain degree of relationship, have a lower chance to engage in social loafing <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>. Strong group identity is beneficial to diminishing social loafing <ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Reward''':
: Individuals are less likely to put effort and are less motivated when they believe that they are not being perceived by their superiors. The distribution of rewards (this could be monetary, recognition, or anything that will motivate the team) is beneficial to avoid social loafing <ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref>.
 
*'''Stimulation Redunction''':
: In simple tasks, individuals tend to get a better outcome result when working alone, the opposite result was observed in complex tasks. In complex task, the overall performance increases when working in a group <Ref>Latane, B., Williams, K. & Harkins, S. Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 822–832 (1979).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref>.
 
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== Social Loafing remedies ==
 
Most organizations have teams running their projects, and it is a challenge for project managers to build up a good team with high performance. Social loafing in projects is not something unavoidable, but there are some measures and actions that could help diminish it.
 
The leaders have a big role in a project’s success. They can influence their team to work more efficiently by organizing the settings of the operations, setting goals and expectations about the individual and group accomplishments <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref>.
 
When building and maintaining a team for a project, some factors can be more influential to avoiding social loafing than others. The following list summarizes those factors <Ref>Gil, F. Social Loafing. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3, 411–419 (2004).</ref> <ref>Harkins, S. G. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23, (1987).</ref> <ref>Williams, K. D. et al. Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration. (1993).</ref> <ref>Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Jaworski, R. A. & Bennett, N. Social Loafing: A Field Investigation. Journal of Management 30, 285–304 (2004).</ref> <ref>Rutte, C. G. Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working 361–378 (2008) doi:10.1002/9780470696712.CH17.</ref>.
 
 
*Make smaller groups
 
*A multi-skilled group can be beneficial to avoid social loafing, thus the task interdependence might be smaller
 
*Meaningful tasks
 
*Unique tasks
 
*Individual responsibility for tasks
 
*Group cohesiveness
 
*Working with friends or close team-mates can diminish, but not eliminate social loafing
 
*Frequent feedback about individual and group performance
 
*Monitoring individual and group performance
 
*Defining standards and comparative criteria
 
*Set realistic goals, but also challenging
 
*Motivate individuals, so they feel that their contribution is valuable and important for the project: feeling of belonging
 
*Individual and group rewards: it could be intrinsic (personal achievements, career growth, praises, etc.) or extrinsic (raises, bonus, gifts, etc.)
 
 
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== Annotated bibliography ==
 
*Gil, Francisco. 2004. ''Social Loafing''. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology 3:411–19.
This paper focus on briefly explaining what social loafing is, it goes through some of the first experiments investigating social loafing and does a little summary of the main theoretical explanation about the causes of social loafing: Social Impact Theory; Arousal Reduction; Identification and Evaluation Potential; Dispensability of Effort; Self-Efficacy; The Collective Effort Model (CEM); and Other Integrative Models (Instrumentality, Value, and Equality). It also analyzes the implications of social loafing, and which action could be made to avoid or mitigate social loafing.
 
 
*Harkins, Stephen G. 1987. ''Social Loafing and Social Facilitation''. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 23.
In this publication, Harkins conduct two experiments to investigate the correlation between Social Loafing and Social Facilitation. The two experiments were designed to include findings from previous experiments in these subjects. The two experiments were conducted on a scenario that the participants’ performance was evaluated or not. The results demonstrated that Social Loafing and Social Facilitation have a correlation. The combination of the study of those two paradigms could lead to a better understanding of both Social Loafing and Social Facilitation.
 
 
*Latane, Bibb, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins. 1979. ''Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing''. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37(6):822–32.
This paper goes through two experiments about Social Loafing. People were asked to perform the simple task of clapping and cheering, and results showed that the individual performance in a group decreased a lot compared to when they performed alone. The paper also discusses some of the causes of Social Loafing: Attribution and equality, Submaximal goal setting, Lessened contingency between input and outcome. And they conclude by discussing the consequences for society, and what could be done to minimize Social Loafing.
 
 
*Liden, Robert C., Sandy J. Wayne, Renata A. Jaworski, and Nathan Bennett. 2004. ''Social Loafing: A Field Investigation''. Journal of Management 30(2):285–304. doi: 10.1016/j.jm.2003.02.002.
This journal goes through the definition of Social Loafing, citing some experiments and research made about this topic, and after categorizing the causes of Social Loafing into two categories: the “Individual-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing” and the “Group-Level Antecedents of Social Loafing”. They performed one research involving two companies, their employees, and their direct managers. The research was thorough interviews of employees and managers about their group work performance and comparing the answers of the participants. They conclude that organizations have a crucial role to avoid Social Loafing and made some observations about remedies actions that the organizations could take to avoid this phenomenon.
 
 
*Rutte, Christel G. 2008. ''Social Loafing in Teams. International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working'' 361–78. doi: 10.1002/9780470696712.CH17
This chapter of the book, International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working, goes through the definition of Social Loafing, giving some examples of experiments made about this topic. The focus of the chapter is on the remedies of Social Loafing at the group level: how to keep the team motivated.
 
 
*Williams, Kipling D., Martin Bourgeois, Donal Carlston, Alice Eagly, Rebecca Henry, Janice Kelly, Norbert Kerr, Brian Mullen, Kristin Sommer, and Steven J. Karau. 1993. ''Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytic Review and Theoretical Integration''.
This paper goes through the definition of Social Loafing and analyses all different experiments. The experiments were categorized and grouped according to the task type, complexity, methodology, Theory-relevant predictors. The Collective Effort Model (CEM) is the result of the meta-analysis of all the experiments. The CEM is a tool to generate predictions regarding the interaction of different triggers of Social Loafing.
 
 

== References ==

<references/>

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Project loafing in Projects

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S220075: /* 1. Social loafing */