Social Loafing

Dear Students,

Have you, so far, come across the term 'Social Loafing’ in Organisation Behaviour?

Social Loafing is a problem that is commonly found in almost all organisational contexts. With most tasks being accomplished by teams, it is quite common for a few members to slack off and not contribute to the team's cause, and yet not have the results suffer. A simple definition of one in social loafing is an agent who does not contribute his fair share to the cost of production of a resource, but receives an equal share of the benefits. Sometimes this is also known as free riding.

The key difference between free riding and social loafing is that a free rider does not contribute to the cause at all, since his contribution is not essential for success, whereas a social loafer merely reduces his effort fully knowing that it would be impossible for an external observer to determine the same.

Dealing with free riding and social loafing:

The Ringelmann experiment suggests that the size of the group may have some answers to offer us. A good manager may need to precisely identify the number of people it would require to successfully accomplish a task. Second, social loafing is seen in situations where it is impossible to identify individual contribution.

Thus, a good way to prevent it may be to clearly define the individual's role in the group task. Third, it is seen that social loafing does not present a major problem in cohesive teams (the reason being that team members value their affiliation with the group more than any benefits associated with social loafing). Thus, the choice of specific team members for a task may also help in minimising social loafing.

Task significance may also have a role to play in increasing motivation levels to perform. Task significance refers to the relevance of the task to the immediate organisation, group, society or the world at large.

One suspects that social loafing may be a less common phenomenon in an NGO, compared to other types of organisations.

Reward systems such as stock options and performance bonuses too increase the cost of not contributing, as non-contribution would directly lead to reduced benefits for the individual team member.

Thus, each team member would at least contribute in his own self interest.

So, as managers, our endeavour should be to reduce social loafing within a team.

With Dassera greetings & happy Shuvo Bijoya!

Prof.D.P.Chattopadhyay
(Globsyn Business School)