Group membership salience and task performance

Abstract

PurposeSocial loafing is described in the literature as a frequent problem reducing individuals' performance when working in groups. This paper aims to utilize the social identity approach and proposes that under conditions of heightened group salience social loafing can be reduced and turned into social laboring (i.e. increased performance).Design/methodology/approachTwo experimental studies are conducted to examine the impact of participant's group membership salience on task performance. In Study 1, school teachers work either in coactive or in collective working conditions on brainstorming tasks. In Study 2, participants perform both a brainstorming task and a motor task.FindingsThe results show social laboring effects. As predicted, participants in the high salient group conditions outperform participants in the low salient group conditions and the coactive individual condition.Practical implicationsThe results indicate that rather than individuating group members or tasks to overcome social loafing, managers can increase group performance by focusing on group members' perceptions of their groups as important and salient.Originality/valueThe studies presented in this paper show that social identity theory and self categorization theory can fruitfully be applied to the field of group performance. The message of these studies for applied settings is that collective work in groups must not necessarily negatively impact performance, i.e. social loafing. By heightening the salience of group memberships groups can even outperform coactively working individuals.

Do many hands make light work?

“…Indeed, 90 years ago, a German researcher demonstrated that working as a member of a group that competes against another group can lead to higher performance compared to individual performance (Moede, 1914). In a similar way, van Dick et al (2009) demonstrated higher group performance as a consequence of team comparison (as a form of benchmarking) in line with the assumptions. However, both studies suffer from shortcomings in that the groups performed their tasks in artificial laboratory environments.…”

“…Finally, we will outline how practitioners can make use of these mechanisms by using specific forms of teambuilding and other strategies. Various researchers have investigated problems of motivation losses in groups from a social identity perspective (van Dick et al, 2009;van Dick, 2004;Worchel et al, 1998). These studies tested the assumption that process losses might be overcome through manipulation of the personal significance of the group.…”

Effect of nonverbal behavioral patterns on the performance of small groups

“…In [2], Bradley defined four main personality types with their subcategories and analyzed the effect of trait compositions on the performance. The relation between the members' engagement in discussion and the team performance was investigated by Haslam [7] and by van Dick [16]. It was found that the group makes better decisions when they work collectively (in the former) and when members are actively interacting, i.e.…”

El uso interactivo de la información de control y las respuestas emocionales de los empleados

“…Las tareas de lluvias de ideas son frecuentemente utilizadas en trabajos de investigación de psicología(Van Dick et al, 2009). El objetivo es definir una tarea sencilla donde el rendimiento dependa principalmente de la motivación de los individuos, y no de sus conocimientos previos o experiencia en la materia(Libby y Thorne, 2009;Van Dick et al, 2009) 5.…”

“…El objetivo es definir una tarea sencilla donde el rendimiento dependa principalmente de la motivación de los individuos, y no de sus conocimientos previos o experiencia en la materia(Libby y Thorne, 2009;Van Dick et al, 2009) 5. Se midió en el cuestionario de control la experiencia previa laboral de los participantes en guarderías o colegios de nivel infantil 6.…”