Omar a. alnuaimi is assistant Professor in the College of business and Economics at the united arab Emirates university. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Walton College of business at the university of arkansas, Fayetteville. His research focuses on technology-enabled team collaboration, enterprise systems implementations, and electronic government. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education and conference proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). liOnel P. rObert Jr. is assistant Professor of Information Systems at the university of arkansas, Fayetteville, Sam M. Walton College of business. His research focuses on team collaboration in virtual environments. Dr. robert was a bat doctoral fellow and kPMg scholar at Indiana university, where he completed his Ph.D. in Information Systems. Dr. robert's research has been published in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and Journal of Quality Management, as well as in conference proceedings, including the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), and academy of Management Conference (aOM). His book Social Capital and Knowledge Integration in Virtual Teams was published by VCM Verlag in 2007. likOebe m. maruPing is associate Professor of Information Systems in the College of business at the university of louisville. He was previously at the Sam M. Walton College of business at the university of arkansas. His research is primarily focused on the activities through which software development teams improve software project outcomes. the work he is currently doing in the area focuses on understanding how teams cope with uncertainty in software development projects. He also enjoys conducting research on virtual teams and the implementation of new technologies in organizations. His research has been published or is forthcoming in premier information systems, organizational behavior, and psychology journals, including MIS Quarterly,

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Social loafing, i.e. the tendency of some individuals to not exert as much effort in team settings as when they are working alone, has been identified as a major source of productivity loss in brainstorming teams. Studies of social loafing in brainstorming Computer Mediated Communication teams are scant. This paper examines the mechanisms through which previously identified antecedents (Group size and perceived loafing of other members) of social loafing work. This paper utilizes the Theory of Moral Disengagement which helps explain how people engage in antisocial, i.e. social loafing in this case, behavior by disengaging their self-sanctions that otherwise will restrain such conduct. To test the hypotheses, this study employs a controlled experiment with 47 undergraduate students from a Middle Eastern university. Findings indicate that diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization mediates the positive effect of group size on social loafing in brainstorming teams. Also, attribution of blame was found to have a direct negative effect on social loafing. Implications of these findings are discussed and managerial guidelines presented.