Steven J. Karau

Social loafing : a meta-analytic review and theoretical integration

Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually. A meta-analysis of 78 studies demonstrates that social loafing is robust and generalizes across tasks and S populations. A large number of variables were found to moderate social loafing. Evaluation potential, expectations of co-worker performance, task meaningfulness, and culture had especially strong influence. These findings are interpreted in the light of a Collective Effort Model that integrates elements of expectancy-value, social identity, and self-validation theories. Many of lifes most important tasks can only be accomplished in groups, and many group tasks are collective tasks that require the pooling of individual members inputs. Government task forces, sports teams, organizational committees, symphony orchestras, juries, and quality control teams provide but a few examples of groups that combine individual efforts to form a single product. Because collective work settings are so pervasive and indispensable, it is important to determine which factors motivate and demotivate individuals within these collective contexts. Intuition might lead to the conclusion that working with others should inspire individuals to maximize their potential and work especially hard. Research on social loafing, however, has revealed that individuals frequently exert less effort on collective tasks than on individual tasks. Formally, social loafing is the reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively compared with when they work individually or coactively. When working collectively, individuals work in the real or imagined presence of others with whom they combine their inputs to form a single group product. When working coactively, individuals work in the real or imagined presence of others, but their inputs are not combined with the inputs of others. Determining the conditions under which individuals do or do not engage in social loafing is a problem of both theoretical and practical importance. At a practical level, the identification of moderating variables may

Gender and the effectiveness of leaders: a meta-analysis.

This article presents a synthesis of research on the relative effectiveness of women and men who occupy leadership and managerial roles. Aggregated over the organizational and laboratory experimental studies in the sample, male and female leaders were equally effective. However, consistent with the assumption that the congruence of leadership roles with leaders gender enhances effectiveness, men were more effective than women in roles that were defined in more masculine terms, and women were more effective than men in roles that were defined in less masculine terms. Also, men were more effective than women to the extent that leader and subordinate roles were male-dominated numerically. These and other findings are discussed from the perspective of social-role theory of sex differences in social behavior as well as from alternative perspectives.

Gender and the Emergence of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis

In this article, research is reviewed on the emergence of male and female leaders in initially leaderless groups

Social loafing and social compensation: the effects of expectations of co-worker performance.

Previous research has suggested that people tend to engage in social loafing when working collectively. The present research tested the social compensation hypothesis, which states that people will work harder collectively than individually when they expect their co-workers to perform poorly on a meaningful task. In 3 experiments, participants worked either collectively or coactively on an idea generation task. Expectations of co-worker performance were either inferred from participants interpersonal trust scores (Experiment 1) or were directly manipulated by a confederate coworkers statement of either his intended effort (Experiment 2) or his ability at the task (Experiment 3). All 3 studies supported the social compensation hypothesis. Additionally, Experiment 3 supported the hypothesis that participants would not socially compensate for a poorly performing co-worker when working on a task that was low in meaningfulness.

The effects of time scarcity and time abundance on group performance quality and interaction process

Abstract The present research was designed to examine the impact of temporal constraints on group interaction and performance. Thirty-six triads worked on one of two planning tasks under conditions of time scarcity, optimal time, or time abundance. Group interactions were videotaped and coded using the TEMPO system. Each groups written solution was rated on length, originality, creativity, adequacy, issue involvement, quality of presentation, optimism, and action orientation. Each proposal suggested during the interaction was rated on creativity and adequacy. Interaction process data showed that time limits were inversely related to the amount of task focus shown by groups. Performance data showed that the effects of time limits on group performance varied depending on what aspects of quality were considered. Process-performance relationships were also examined within each time condition. The findings are discussed in terms of an attentional focus model of time limits and group performance.

Group Decision Making: The Effects of Initial Preferences and Time Pressure

Triads, working under time pressure or not, participated in a management simulation that asked groups to decide which of two cholesterol-reducing drugs to market. The total distribution of information available to the group always favored the same drug. However, members’ initial preferences were manipulated by varying the distribution of shared information (provided to all members) and unshared information (provided to only a single member) supporting each alternative. Thus, each member’s fact sheet either (a) favored the correct decision (correct preference condition), (b) mildly favored the incorrect decision (weak incorrect preference condition), or (c) strongly favored the incorrect decision (strong incorrect preference condition). Initial preferences were major determinants of group decisions. Time pressure either enhanced or reduced decision quality depending on the strength of initial preferences and the content of the group interactions. These findings are discussed in light of Karau and Kelly’s Attentional Focus Model of group performance.

The effects of group cohesiveness on social loafing and social compensation.

Individuals often engage in social loafing, exerting less effort on collective rather than individual tasks. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that social loafing can be reduced or eliminated when individuals work in cohesive rather than noncohesive groups. In Experiment 1, secretarial students

Gender and motivation to manage in hierarchic organizations: A meta-analysis

Abstract Research is reviewed that compares womens and mens motivation to manage as assessed by the Miner Sentence Completion Scale, a projective measure designed to reveal respondents motivation to meet the role requirements that traditionally characterized managerial positions in hierarchic organizations. An analysis of the predominantly masculine definition of this type of managerial role provides the theoretical context for a quantitative integration of 51 data sets covering a period of over 30 years and consisting mainly of samples of business students. Although men scored higher in motivation to manage than women, these sex differences were relatively small. On five of the subscales of the instrument, men scored higher than women; on two subscales, women scored higher. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to several aspects of womens participation in managerial roles, including prejudice against female managers and the possible evolution of managerial roles toward more androgynous role definitions.

Entrainment of Creativity in Small Groups

The present research was designed to examine both the initial and the persisting effects of time limits on group creativity. Thirty-three triads worked on an unusual-uses task during each of three time periods that increased, decreased, or stayed constant over the three trials. Various measures of creativity and of rate of use generation were used. Each use was rated on a 7-point scale for creativity and feasibility. In addition, uses were categorized into hierarchical categories. The results showed that short initial time limits led to faster rates ofperformance, but lowercreativity, than did long initial time limits. Both rate and creativity effects tended to persist over trials, even though time limits changed, leading to the surprising effect of increased creativity with increased time pressure over trials in the decreasing time limit series. The results are discussed within the context of the social entrainment model.

On the Elusive Search for Motivation Gains in Groups: Insights from the Collective Effort Model

Summary: Although motivation losses in groups have been fairly easy to document and replicate, the search for motivation gains in groups has been far more elusive. Recently, we developed and tested various aspects of the Collective Effort Model (CEM; Karau & Williams, 1993) that we believe successfully accounts for prior research on social loafing and provides many useful clues as to conditions that may produce motivation gains in groups. In this article, we provide an overview of the CEM, illustrate its usefulness in guiding and understanding social compensation research, explain how it accounts for other motivation gains established in the literature, and highlight its implications for uncovering additional situations that may be conducive to motivation gains in groups.