SOCIAL LOAFING

Social loafing is the phenomenon in which participants, who work together, generate less effort than do participants who work alone.

In an experiment, Ringelmann noticed that, as you added more and more people to a group pulling on a rope, the total force exerted by the group rose, but the average force exerted by each group member declined. The Ringelmann Effect thus describes the inverse relationship between the size of a team and the magnitude of group member's individual contribution to the accomplishment of the task.

In other experiments, speeds for rowing crews have been studied. Increasing the number of crew members does not proportionally increase the speed of the shells.

Is this just an experimental phenomenon, or does this actually happen in real work environments? The answer to this question is perhaps best summed up by an ORGB 2110 student who, when the question was posed, responded with the rhetorical question: "Have you ever moved a couch with several people?" The knowing laughter  evoked by his question speaks to most peoples' experience with this phenomenon -- it is real. The phenomenon is real and has been given the name social loafing.

Thus, we are faced with the question: "Why does this occur?"

Perhaps the most probable explanation is that when participants "work together", their outputs are pooled so that evaluation of individual output is not possible. Thus they can receive neither credit nor blame for their performances.

Recognizing the existence of this phenomenon is useful, but as managers and students of organizations, we also need  to ask ourselves how social loafing can be minimized. In part, the answer lies in the paragraph above. If the work being done can actually be reconfigured so that individuals do receive credit or blame for their separate inputs, then social loafing is less like to occur.

Of course, it is easier to simple state this than to actually operationalize it -- how do we assign credit or blame to the individuals involved in moving our couch? I would dearly love to give more bottles of beer to the fellow who did most of the work, but I'm not sure that, in this circumstance, I'm able to measure each worker's individual contribution. Implicitly, the guys moving the couch may be aware of the fact that "someone" was the "social loafer". However, they too may be unable to pinpoint where the problem lies. This has clear motivational consequences when (after a beer break, of course) it comes time to move the mattress. Since each of the fellows moving the couch, regardless of the effort he expended, was awarded a beer, I shouldn't be surprised if all of them decide work just a bit less when they get to work on moving the mattress. Social loafing has now become a norm.

Are there, however, circumstances under which social loafing is less likely to occur? Assume for a moment that the people doing the work have some sort of personal involvement in the successful accomplishment of the task. At the risk of pushing the usefulness of our mattress-moving metaphor, let's assume that the guys moving the mattress out of the house know that the sooner my mattress is out of the house, the sooner they can move their personal belongings into the house and thus take possession of that house. Clearly, if each of these guys is indeed motivated by the fact that they personally have something to gain by getting my possessions out of the house quickly, then they are less likely to engage in social loafing behaviors.

Viewed from a corporate perspective, we might compare mattress movers who are paid on an hourly basis with those who are partners in the firm (through stock options or employee share ownership plans). If I'm a partner in the mattress moving firm, I have a personal involvement in the outcome -- if I engage in social loafing, I am cheating myself. At this point, I can actually determine a direct link between my behavior and my rewards.

Research further suggests that social loafing is minimized in highly cohesive teams. In cohesive teams, each member's desire to be a member of the team is much stronger than their desire to leave. In essence, this is related to the concept of personal involvement discussed above. In other words, the members of a cohesive team each have a personal desire (involvement) to see the continued existence (success) of the team. Social loafing would jeopardize the success (and consequently the survival) of the team.

Unique and challenging tasks have also been shown to minimize social loafing. This is consistent with motivational theories pertaining to the nature of work. In general, it has been shown that people are motivated by interesting work (variety, significant and unique). If motivated, people are less inclined engage in social loafing. This, of course begs the question: "How do I make moving mattresses interesting?" Perhaps the answer lies in the work of Hackman and Oldham.

Salient tasks have also been shown to minimize social loafing. This is consistent with the work of Hackman and Oldham which suggests that task significance (the importance of the job; the degree to which the job has an impact on the lives of other people, the immediate organization or the external environment) increases job motivation. The greater the job motivation, the less likely the worker is to become a social loafer. Whereas rowing crews have been shown to suffer from social loafing during practice sessions, those same crews, when faced with the salient task of winning an Olympic medal, were able to eliminate social loafing. On a more somber note, the recovery efforts of workers at the World Trade Center in New York, after the recent terrorism attack, are perhaps extreme examples of salient tasks. The tasks, particularly when the possibility of finding survivors was realistic, were clearly salient.

While much research has focused on how social loafing can be reduced, some studies have examined the role of individual differences in social loafing. It has been found that participants with a high level of achievement motivation work as hard when their output is identifiable as when their output is pooled. However, the performance of participants with a low level of achievement motivation tends to drop significantly -- they loaf when their output is pooled.