Theoretical and empirical evidence of behavioral and production line factors that influence helping behavior

Abstract

A poorly motivated workforce can have a negative impact on the productivity of production lines and firm performance. One factor that can counter the effects of poorly performing workers is if stronger colleagues step in and assist them. Leveraging theory from the organizational citizenship behavior literature, this study examines how behavioral and production line factors influence individuals to help team members in a production line experiment. Study findings are that perceptions of social loafing and material‐handling ambiguity influence team helping behavior. Empirical evidence also suggests that perceptions of social loafing mediate the relationship of team altruism on helping behavior. Post hoc analyses are conducted to further explore how the behavioral and production factors influence helping behavior. Strategies for promoting volitional helping behavior are discussed.

On making experimental design choices: Discussions on the use and challenges of demand effects, incentives, deception, samples, and vignettes

“…There are also good examples of mixed‐method approaches. Cantor and Jin (2019) examined how production line factors influence intrinsically motivated helping behaviors, and do not incorporate use of incentives in their main study. The absence of incentives in this instance represents an appropriate match of research question, context, and design choice.…”

“…The absence of incentives in this instance represents an appropriate match of research question, context, and design choice. In post hoc tests, Cantor and Jin (2019) introduced team‐ and individual‐level performance incentives, and found that while individual incentives were not related to helping, team‐based incentives were. Again, the research question (i.e., do incentives influence helping?)…”

Impact of work-sharing on the performance of production line with heterogeneous workers

“…The investigation of a trade-off between tooling costs and throughput improvement remains as future work. Moreover, the impact of the social loafing effect as investigated by Cantor and Jin [30] also needs to be examined. Our model is limited to only a two-stage tandem dedicated production line.…”

Simulation and Evaluation of Production Factors in Manufacturing of Fireplaces

“…An insufficient motivation of the workforce may cause a negative impact on the productivity of production lines and business performance. The study [18] examines influence of behavioural and production line factors on subjects working in teams.…”