Social Loafing: A Case Study

It is found that the larger the size of the group, the higher the level of anonymity in individuals. The increase in anonymity raises the difficulty in assessing individual performance (Liden, Wayne, Jaworski & Bennett, 2004). The second factor is the valence, or the meaningfulness of the group to the individual. It is observed that if the individual perceives the team goals to be less meaningful, he or she demonstrates a lower level of valence and the likeliness of them loafing increase (Dick, Tissington & Hertel, 2009). Another factor is culture, people from different cultural backgrounds tend to have different level of motivation when working in groups. In most cases, people who adopt the western cultures usually works individually and people who adopts the eastern or oriental cultures tend to work in groups. People from individualistic culture has a higher tendency to loaf whereas people from collectivistic culture has higher motivation when working in a group (Simms & Nichols, 2014).
The first proposed intervention which is also the preferred intervention is the “Diary Method” (DM). In the DM, managers can ask members of the work group to keep either an …show more content…
As organisations today rely on groups to complete tasks heavily, learning the effects and causes of social loafing in work teams can be beneficial as they can only prevent the occurrence of such phenomenon after understanding it. By preventing social loafing the organisations can stop facing the negative effects of this phenomenon such as loss of productivity, difficulties in managing and motivating large groups and groups of different cultural backgrounds by preventing social loafing and instead make individuals in a group work to their fullest potential, increasing the level of productivity and