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Groups and teams: a review of bad apple behavior

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Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this conceptual paper is to broaden the understanding of the three negative member (bad apple) behaviors – withholding of effort, interpersonal deviance and negative affect – put forth by Felps et al. (2006). Design/methodology/approach An integrative review of extant literature was conducted to understand the impact of the negative member behaviors on other team members. Potential interventions to control this bad apple behavior are identified with supporting evidence from recent empirical studies. Findings A review of empirical findings in the literature indicate that perceived coworker loafing may lead to counterproductive work behavior toward coworkers and interpersonal deviance may affect the task cohesion of the group. However, the presence of affectively negative individuals is empirically proven to improve the group performance, especially when the group task is related to creativity or information processing (decision-making and idea generation). Originality/value Despite the empirical attention paid to “bad apple” behaviors, the implications for managing negative member behaviors are unclear and scattered. In this paper, building on the framework proposed by Felps et al. (2006), the authors focus on three behaviors and provide a concise review of literature and interventions to control or exploit these behaviors.

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... Felps, Mitchell & Byington (2006) defined bad behavior as any behavior that has a detrimental effect on other team members and also on overall group performance. Jaikumar and Mendonca (2017) argued that a negative member can have damaging effects on group performance. Therefore, identifying the individual's negative behaviors will help identify different outcomes at the individual, group, and organization levels. ...
... The results of the study indicate that there is a statistically significant effect of empathy, motivation, and social skills on the task performance, indicating that the use of managers and officials in the industrial companies operating in Jordan of empathy with employees at work and increasing their motivation through financial and nonfinancial motives, as well as focusing on social skills, will lead to enhancing employees' performance of their tasks. The results of this study are in agreement with those of Amundson (2003), Goleman et al. (2002), Jaikumar and Mendonca (2017), Wageman (2012), and Wong and Law (2002), while the self-awareness and self-regulation dimensions have no statistically significant effect on task performance. The results also indicate a statistically significant effect of the motivation and social skills dimensions on the contextual performance, while the self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation dimensions have no statistically significant effect on contextual performance according to the study tool respondents' opinion. ...
... The results of this study are consistent with what Amundson (2003), Goleman et al. (2002), Jaikumar and Mendonca (2017), Wageman (2012), and Wong and Law (2002) have stated. The benefit of emotional intelligence and the need to develop it can be summarized as follows: It is important to recognize that an operational team leader or a supervisor with a high level of emotional intelligence has a positive effect on the work environment, being a source of energy. ...
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This study is aimed at identifying the effect of emotional intelligence with its dimensions (self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills) on the performance of working teams with its dimensions (task performance, contextual performance, and counterproductive performance) among employees on the operational lines of industrial companies operating in the Jordanian city of Sahab. The analysis is limited to employees in those companies, and the questionnaire is used as a data collection tool, taking a simple random sample to represent the study population. In addition to the analysis of 216 questionnaires, the SPSS program is used as a data analysis tool in the study. The study emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence dimensions for operational team leaders, especially motivation and social skills dimensions because they have a higher effect on the task performance and contextual performance levels, while all dimensions of emotional intelligence have a negative effect on counterproductive performance for operational team members.
... In the current theoretical framework, we specifically focus on the dysfunctional team behavior (Cole et al., 2008), which refers to the destructive behavior that could obstruct the team process and undermine the team effectiveness, as a potential negative outcomes. We focus on dysfunctional team behavior because it is a construct that is commonly studied in the team literature (Cole et al., 2008;Jaikumar and Mendonca, 2017;MacKenzie et al., 2011). In addition, this construct is particularly relevant to psychological safety climate as psychological safety climate allows team members to take interpersonal risks without concerns, and can thus nurture destructive team behaviors. ...
... Sharing the call for more insights regarding the potential dark side of psychological safety (Frazier et al., 2016;Newman et al., 2017) and drawing on a climate strength perspective, we take the initiative to propose a theoretical framework to extend our understanding of the impact of psychological safety. Particularly, team dysfunctional behavior is destructive to team performance and is damaging to development and sustainability of a healthy team (Jaikumar and Mendonca, 2017). Our framework delineates when and how psychological safety climate could influence dysfunctional team behavior. ...
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Purpose Psychological safety climate has been commonly conceptualized as a facilitative team property. Despite the literature review and meta-analysis conducted recently, little is known about the potential dark side of psychological safety climate. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to advance our understanding of both the bright and dark sides of psychological safety. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on extant theories and previous literature, the authors propose a conceptual framework of the mechanisms and boundary conditions underlying the relationship between psychological safety climate and dysfunctional team behavior. Findings The authors propose that the relationship between psychological safety climate and dysfunctional behaviors in the team is directly contingent on psychological safety climate strength, and indirectly contingent on task interdependence, group faultlines, group conflict asymmetry and team power distance differentiation. Originality/value First, the authors attempt to expand psychological safety climate literature by considering its potential damaging outcomes. Second, they contribute to the theory of psychological safety climate by suggesting a theoretical model consisting of the boundary conditions wherein psychological safety climate could reduce team effectiveness. Finally, the authors incorporate climate strength into the psychological safety literature to probe the antecedents of psychological safety climate strength and when it matters to the subsequent negative outcomes.
... In recent years, in the wake of internal corporate scandals and heightened public attention, increased scholarly attention has been devoted to ethical issues and consequent conduct within organizations (Mitchell et al., 2020;Wiernik & Ones, 2018). Scholars have often used the term "bad apples" (Jaikumar & Mendonca, 2017) when referring to individuals enacting unethical organizational behaviours, with others using "good soldiers" (Bolino et al., 2010) or "good guys" to refer to individuals showing beneficial and ethical extra-role behaviours to their organizations. ...
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Objective.-Consistently with Bandura's theory of moral disengagement, we examined if moral disengagement predicted employees' counterproductive work behaviours and organizational citizenship behaviours, also assessing moral competence as a moderator that, at higher values, could mitigate the positive association with counterproductive work behaviours and mitigate the negative association with organizational citizenship behaviours. Method.-Five hundred eighty-three Italian employees completed a time-lagged online survey including the following measures: Work Moral Disengagement Scale (Fida, Paciello et al., 2015), Moral Competence Test (Lind, 1985), Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist (Spector et al., 2006), Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (Podsakoff et al., 1990). Associations between variables were examined via multiple linear regressions with bootstrapping, while the interactions were probed through the Johnson-Neyman technique. Results.-Moral disengagement is positively related to counterproductive work behaviours and negatively related to organizational citizenship behaviours. Furthermore, the association between moral disengagement and counterproductive work behaviours is moderated by moral competence, with a significant positive association only at lower levels of the moderator. Conclusion.-We demonstrated for the first time the potentially significant role played by moral competence as a moderator that could reduce the negative effects of moral disengagement on deviant and unethical organizational behaviours, discussing our results in light of available evidence and theory, and elaborating on practical implications.
... "Antisocial Workplace Behavior," "Retaliatory Workplace Behavior," "Workplace Aggression," "Institutional Misbehavior," "Counterproductive Behavior," and "Workplace Deviance" have all been used interchangeably in the literature. The amount of undesirable behaviours, such as antisocial, unethical, counterproductive work conduct, deviant, bad apples, or incivility, have previously been grouped together by studies (Baharom et al., 2017;Jaikumar & Mendonca, 2017;Marcus et al., 2016). While most behaviours are seen as negative, deviation from the organizational norms can also sometimes be positive and beneficial for the organizations. ...
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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an area of significant importance since its introduction in 1953 and organizations today look at it as a commitment to the welfare of society and its long-term sustainability of health and safety measures, environmental conservation, stakeholder engagement, good governance and ethical practices. Previous literature has indicated that organizations have managed to convert their short-term myopic approach to financial performance into a much broader sustainable triple bottom line approach of corporate performance comprising economic, social and environmental dimensions. This paper is an attempt to understand the transformation from CSR to a sustainability approach and the relationship between them through a review of empirical pieces of literature related to the area under consideration.
... O'Boyle et al. (2011) and Lugosi (2019) described multilevel models of CWB and underlined the influence that individual but also group and organizational factors have on the counterproductive behavior of individuals. The opposite approach was taken by Jaikumar and Mendonca (2017) that, in their integrative review, examined the effects that the negative behavior of a team member, such as withholding efforts, interpersonal deviance and negative affect, have on the other team members and on team performance. ...
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This study provides a scoping review of the recent conceptual developments about the deviant work behavior and counterproductive work behavior constructs. It also examines the specific types of deviant work behavior that have been more consistently investigated in the last decade, and whether they cover the interpersonal or organizational type of deviant behavior. In addition, individual, group, and organizational predictors of deviant work behaviors are examined. A scoping review of reviews was conducted on Scopus and Web of Science databases and 54 studies published from 2010 to June 2021 were taken into account. Results show that more recent conceptualizations are based on well established models in the literature and consider the hierarchical structure of these two constructs. Recent reviews examine the relationships of deviant work behavior with job performance and ethical behavior constructs, the multilevel nature of deviant work behavior, and the consequences for the actor of the deviance. The specific types of deviant work behavior more frequently reviewed in the last decade are workplace abuse, incivility, ostracism, bullying and sexual harassment, and abusive and destructive leadership; this evidence suggests a much greater attention to interpersonal, rather than organizational, forms of deviant work behavior. Regarding antecedents, results show the continuing prevalence of personality factors antecedents. Limitations of the study and theoretical and practical implications for the field are also provided.
... Most of previous research on CWB either stems from social exchange, social identity and social learning perspectives (e.g., Ferguson and Barry, 2011;Dalal, 2005), or is based on dispositional differences to predict such behaviours (e.g., Jaikumar and Mendonca, 2017). Although conservation of resources (COR) perspective is both important and relevant, it is somewhat ignored in the contemporary CWB research (Hobfoll et al., 2018). ...
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Purpose This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms through which organisational justice influences counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). This relationship was explained using a moderated mediation model where organisational embeddedness is a mediator between organisational justice and CWB, while psychological ownership (for the organisation) is a moderator of the relationship between organisational embeddedness and CWB. The conservation of resources (COR) theory was used as the underpinning theory to explain the interrelationships among the constructs. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected by administering a quantitative cross-sectional survey to employees of Punjab Police, a large public sector, law enforcement organisation in Pakistan. The study model was analysed using PLS-SEM to address the treatment of higher-order reflective-formative constructs. Findings The results showed that organisational justice is positively related to organisational embeddedness, while organisational embeddedness is negatively related to CWB. Organisational embeddedness was found to play a significant role in mediating the negative effects of organisational justice on CWB. Also, psychological ownership moderated the influence of organisational embeddedness on CWB in an interesting fashion. CWB was the highest when both embeddedness and ownership were low; however, CWB was not the lowest when both embeddedness and ownership were high. Research limitations/implications Reliance on self-report data, not accounting for the community embeddedness and discounting the differential effects of justice dimensions are some of the limitations of the present study. Despite these limitations, this study offers valuable insights into how the occurrence of CWB can be minimised. That is, apart from providing a work environment based on fair procedures and policies, it is critically important to manage the perceptions of embeddedness and psychological ownership of employees. Originality/value Although numerous researchers have studied the link between organisational justice and CWB, few have explored the roles of organisational embeddedness and psychological ownership in this relationship. This study thus posits a novel moderated mediation mechanism, based on the COR theory, through which organisational justice is translated into CWB. Moreover, this study adds value by investigating this model in the police force context, where justice and CWB have important consequences.
... reputable publications, much of the research conducted on higher education includes antecedents of social loafing (Aggarwal & O'Brien, 2008;Alnuaimi, Robert Jr, & Maruping, 2010;Hsiang-Ming & Wen-Ching, 2014;Jaikumar & Mendonca, 2017;Mefoh & Nwanosike, 2012;Thompson & Thornton, 2014) and consequences of social loafing (Jassawalla et al., 2009). Much of the previous research has focused on how to deal with social loafing behavior toward improving group performance (Kelly, 2008;Kent Thomas & Hasbrouck Robert, 2003;Lam, 2015;Ma, Huang, Wu, Dong, & Qi, 2014;Meyers, 1997;Modell Micah, 2017;Perron, 2011). ...
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The purpose of this article is to explore and validate antecedents of social loafing behavior among undergraduate students. A mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) study was conducted. In the first phase, the free-listing method was used to collect data from undergraduate students at a hospitality and tourism school in China, yielding 211 valid responses from 250 students with 409 items. Six factors were identified using the content analysis of those 409 items, including shared responsibility, apathy, time limitation, competency, fairness, and group conflict. In the second phase, 303 responses were collected for exploratory factor analysis. Results revealed a good consistency of factors between the qualitative study and the quantitative study. The hierarchical regressions analysis tested the effects of the factors on social loafing behavior. Study results show that students’ competencies, emotional relationships, and collective identities are key determinants of social loafing behavior. Specific theoretical and practical implications are provided.
... Social loafing and diminished efforts of the co-workers affect the team members in a negative way and cause them to endeavor less or display hindering behaviors to reach the target. In order to eliminate such negative behaviors and low performance, making work more meaningful, improving opting and training processes to define the individuals having negative motivation beforehand, encouraging team commitment feeling, reforming group norms, adopting such various practices as high duty compatibility, organizational support perception and social harmony can decrease the negative effects of social loafing (Saravana & Mendonca, 2017). ...
Chapter
The performance of an employee is quite important for the organizations encountering a severe competition in today's conditions. For the tourism establishments, in which the number of the employees is quite high, providing innovative and quality service, meeting the customer satisfaction, is directly related to the performance of the employee. However, a part of the employees cannot display the expected performance. In literature, this situation is explained as social loafing. In literature, social loafing is the tendency of individuals to expend less effort when working in groups than when working alone. This undesirable situation for the tourism establishments decreases productivity and performance of the business. In the study, firstly the concept of social loafing, the approaches explaining social loafing, the first researches in the literature, and social loafing in the workplace are summarized. Then, the social loafing phenomenon in tourism industry, the studies carried out regarding this subject, and the preventive suggestions for social loafing are given place.
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In multidisciplinary teams in the oil and gas industry, we examined expertise diversity's relationship with team learning and team performance under varying levels of collective team identification. In teams with low collective identification, expertise diversity was negatively related to team learning and performance; where team identification was high, those relationships were positive. Results also supported nonlinear relationships between expertise diversity and both team learning and performance. Finally, team learning partially mediated the linear and nonlinear relationships between diversity and performance. Findings broaden understanding of the process by which and the conditions under which expertise diversity may promote team performance.
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This study explores whether the dynamic path to group affect, which is characterized by interactive affective sharing processes, yields different effects on task performance and group dynamics than the static path to group affect, which arises from non-interactive affective sharing. The results of our experiment with 70 three-person work groups show that groups performed better on creative tasks than on analytical tasks when they were in a positive mood, and better on analytical tasks than on creative tasks when in a negative mood, but only when affect was interactively shared. Moreover, analysis of videotaped group member interactions during task performance showed similar results for work group dynamics, such that group affect influenced belongingness and information sharing only when affect was interactively shared and not when affect was non-interactively shared. Results support the idea that affective sharing processes are fundamental for understanding the effects of group affect on behavior. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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This study ascertains whether the impact of workplace injustice on counterproductive work behavior is moderated by personality and team context. A sample of 131 public-service employees completed a questionnaire that assessed the extent to which they receive distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. Furthermore, team commitment, coworker satisfaction, and Big Five personality traits were assessed. Finally, respondents estimated the frequency with which they and their colleagues engage in counterproductive behaviors. Procedural, distributive, and interactional injustice all provoked counterproductive behaviors. The effect of justice on these destructive acts diminished when team commitment was elevated, coworker satisfaction was limited, agreeableness was pronounced, and neuroticism was reduced. The findings confirm that vulnerability amplifies the impact of injustice, but interdependence can diminish this effect.
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We develop a dual-tuning perspective concerning how positive and negative moods interact to influence creativity in supportive contexts. Using data on employees in an oil field services company, we hypothesized and found that when supervisors provided a supportive context for creativity and positive mood was high, negative mood had a strong, positive relation to creativity, with creativity being the highest when the context was supportive and both positive and negative moods were high. We explored three alternative ways in which supervisors can provide a supportive context: by providing developmental feedback, by displaying interactional justice, and by being trustworthy.
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Teamwork has advantages (e.g., coordination), but also presents challenges of interdependence (e.g., social loafing), which can make teamwork frustrating. Expressing frustration (a negative emotion) with another team member can motivate better performance, but can also backfire, triggering outcomes with serious implications for the team’s viability, such as withdrawal and reduced cooperation. We argue that how negative emotions are expressed in these contexts can mitigate the potential negative consequences for the team’s viability. In two studies (one vignette and one interactive group experiment) we investigate how expressing one’s frustration respectfully (versus rudely) triggers affective and inferential processes that differentially influence team member reactions (withdrawal, evaluations, willingness to work together) to the expresser as well as to other team members uninvolved in the dyadic emotional interaction. Our findings suggest that expressing negative emotions respectfully can convey both frustration and dissatisfaction while mitigating the potential negative consequences for team viability.
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The influences of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and workplace deviant behavior (WDB) on business unit performance were investigated using data from branches of a fast food organization. Data included measures of WDB and OCB obtained from staff, ratings of performance provided by supervisors, and objective measures of performance. It was found that WDB was negatively and significantly associated with business unit performance measured both subjectively and objectively. OCB, however, failed to contribute to the prediction of business unit performance beyond the level that was achieved by WDB. It appeared, therefore, that the presence of deviant employees among business units impinges upon the performance of the business unit as a whole, whereas OCBs had comparatively little effect. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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The present article develops a cognitive stage model of workplace aggression, which contends that aggressive reactions to perceived injustice are cognitively construed following three cognitive steps that include the assessment stage, the accountability stage, and the decision stage. These three cognitive stages are essential in understanding victims’ retaliatory actions against perpetrators of injustices. The model’s implications for research and practice are discussed.
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Three studies (N = 1988) describe the development and validation of the Emotional Contagion (EC) Scale, a 15-item unidimensional measure of susceptibility to others'' emotions resulting from afferent feedback generated by mimicry. Study 1 assesses the EC Scale''s reliability (Cronbach''s = .90). Study 2 finds susceptibility (a) positively related to reactivity, emotionality, sensitivity to others, social functioning, self-esteem, and more associated with emotional than cognitive modes of empathy, (b) negatively related to alienation, self-assertiveness, and emotional stability and, (c) unrelated to masculinity and approval motivation. Study 3, an experiment, finds that EC Scale scores reliably predict biases in participants'' evaluations and are correlated with a measure of responsiveness to afferent feedback and self-reports of emotional experience following exposure to emotional expressions.
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Few investigations have been made to determine what factors influence people in withholding knowledge from their colleagues. We created a construct, knowledge withholding (KW), defined as the likelihood that individuals contribute less knowledge to others in the organization than they could. We have formulated a model, based on social exchange theory and social cognition theory, to analyze the antecedents of KW from both personal and contextual perspectives. The contextual influencers were subdivided into dimensions of rational choice, normative conformity, and affective bonding to help in understanding KW. Results of a survey of 162 MIS alumni of a university, who had experienced software development, trust, distributive justice, and team-related work showed that personal outcome expectations had a substantial influence on KW.
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Cyberloafing is the personal use of email and the Internet while at work. The purpose of this study is to identify the different forms of cyberloafing and their antecedents. We propose that cyberloafing has two primary forms: minor cyberloafing (e.g., sending and receiving personal email at work) and serious cyberloafing (e.g., online gambling, surfing adult oriented web sites). Additionally, we hypothesize that employees’ perceptions of coworker and supervisor norms supporting cyberloafing are related to minor cyberloafing but not serious cyberloafing. We also hypothesize that external locus of control (i.e., a belief that chance and powerful others determines one’s outcomes), as an antecedent of other counterproductive work behaviors, will be related to both minor and serious cyberloafing. Two hundred and twenty two employed graduate business students were surveyed. Two forms of cyberloafing were identified: one composed of minor cyberloafing behaviors and one composed of the more serious cyberloafing behaviors. As predicted, employees’ perceptions of their coworkers’ and supervisor’s norms were positively related to minor cyberloafing, but not related to serious cyberloafing. Also as predicted, belief in chance was positively related to both minor and serious cyberloafing. A belief in powerful others was not related to minor or serious cyberloafing. Implications for policy development to regulate cyberloafing in organizations are discussed.
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Extending the growing interest in affect in work groups, we propose that groups with distributed information make higher quality decisions when they are in a negative rather than a positive mood, but that these effects are moderated by group members' trait negative affect. In support of this hypothesis, an experiment (N = 175 groups) showed that positive mood led to lower quality decisions than did negative or neutral moods when group members were low in trait negative affect, whereas such mood effects were not observed in groups higher in trait negative affect. Mediational analysis based on behavioral observations of group process confirmed that group information elaboration mediated this effect. These results provide an important caveat on the benefits of positive moods in work groups, and suggest that the study of trait ÷ state affect interactions is an important avenue for future research.
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Contemporary competitive demands have forced many organizations to increase levels of flexibility and adaptability in their operations. A growing number of such organizations have explored the virtual environment as one means of achieving increased responsiveness. In particular, the use of virtual teams appears to be on the increase. However, the increased use of virtual teams has not been accompanied by concomitant research efforts to understand better the social-psychological contributors to effective virtual teams. In this paper, we use a model of group effectiveness to propose a possible research agenda examining sources of virtual team effectiveness. Although much of this model offers insights relevant to the virtual environment, differences between groups and teams and between co-located and virtual environments suggest that modifications and additions to this model may be necessary. We offer a set of research propositions to advance future research on effective virtual teams beyond anecdote and description. Implications of this research agenda for managers of virtual teams and human resource professionals are also discussed.
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When employees' coworkers exhibit higher levels of withdrawal, individual employees are more likely to withdraw from their own work. The authors explored whether this relation would be curbed by a positive exchange relationship with one's organization, as suggested by organizational support theory (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986). Among 23 work groups in a manufacturing organization (Study 1), high perceived organizational support (POS) eliminated the relation between work group and individual tardiness. Among 94 work groups in a retail sales organization (Study 2), POS reduced the relation between work group withdrawal and individual withdrawal. ® 2008 Southern Management Association. All rights reserved
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The broaden‐and‐build theory (Fredrickson, 199819. Fredrickson , BL . (1998). What good are positive emotions?. Review of General Psychology, 2: 300–319. [CrossRef], [PubMed]View all references, 200121. Fredrickson , BL . (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden‐and‐build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56: 218–226. [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references) hypothesises that positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Two experiments with 104 college students tested these hypotheses. In each, participants viewed a film that elicited (a) amusement, (b) contentment, (c) neutrality, (d) anger, or (e) anxiety. Scope of attention was assessed using a global‐local visual processing task (Experiment 1) and thought‐action repertoires were assessed using a Twenty Statements Test (Experiment 2). Compared to a neutral state, positive emotions broadened the scope of attention in Experiment 1 and thought‐action repertoires in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, negative emotions, relative to a neutral state, narrowed thought‐action repertoires. Implications for promoting emotional well‐being and physical health are discussed.
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The present study integrates the literature on social loafing and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The authors examined the roles of personality, motives, and contextual factors in influencing the work behaviors of OCB and social loafing. In a sample of 341 individuals working in project groups, with data collected over 3 time periods, the authors found that conscientiousness was negatively related to social loafing. They also found the known positive relation of OCB with conscientiousness. Felt responsibility was negatively related to social loafing. The authors found no significant relations between social loafing and OCB motives.
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This paper presents two studies investigating the influence of social perceptions (perceived loafing, collective efficacy, and cohesion) on group goal processes (difficulty and commitment) and group performance. The role of group goal processes as mediators of the relationships between social perception variables and group performance was also tested. The first study involved a sample of 247 college students in 59 groups working on a team interdependent, divisible academic task. Results supported all but one hypothesis. The mediation hypothesis was not supported as both group goal and social perception variables related similarly to group performance. The second study employed a different design to address some limitations of the first study and to extend those findings. Results from the second study, using 383 college students in 101 groups, were consistent with Study 1 with two exceptions. First, the mediation hypothesis was supported in Study 2, replicating the findings of Klein and Mulvey (1995). Second, anticipated lower effort and the sucker effect, additional intervening variables examined in Study 2, partially mediated the relationship between perceived loafing and collective goal difficulty as hypothesized.