The Role of Communication and Cohesion in Reducing Social Loafing in Group Projects

“his or her work is not visible to fellow teammates, he or she may be less inclined to complete the task at all (Karau & Williams, 1993; George, 1992).”

“Quality group discussion (Burgoon et al., 2002).”

“Other strategies that reduce individual tendencies to loaf include increasing team familiarity and identifiability of individual members and decreasing team size (Erez & Somech, 1996; Lam, 2015).”

“Some studies indicate that instructorcreated groups are fairer and more suitable for real life (Bacon et al., 2001; Blowers, 2003; Lam, 2015).”

“…the gender diversity of team members (e.g., Bear & Woolley, 2011), cultural diversity of team members (e.g., Nathan & Lee, 2013), students’ attitudes toward collaboration (e.g., Ruiz Ulloa & Adams, 2004), and social loafing (e.g., Lam, 2015) could play a significant role on team performances.”

“Of course, these explanatory constructs were not arbitrarily selected; they were included because prior theoretical and empirical research showed that the constructs were correlated with each other (Lam, 2015).”

“The lack of communication or delayed responses to group messages can make an undesirable atmosphere among students (Lam 2015).”

“Another suggestion is for instructors to proactively develop alternatives to manage classmate social loafing (Lam, 2015; Wolfe & Powell, 2014, October 13-15).”

“In a ‘‘collaborative’’ learning environment, revealing contributions by members encourages more active engagement among students (Kerr and Bruun 1983; Lam 2015).”

“However, the literature surrounding peer evaluation has actually been quite mixed when examining its efficacy to reduce slacking and promote a more equitable distribution of the work [30], [42], [43].”

“…have found that public posting of team member performance (Lount & Wilk, 2014), academic alignment (Pieterse & Thompson, 2010), communication quality (Lam, 2015), team size (Aggarwal & O ’ Brien, 2008; Maiden & Perry, 2011; Pieterse & Thompson, 2010), and project scope (Aggarwal & O ’ Brien, 2008)…”

“The first solution is to initiate a code of conduct which outlines clear expectations of what teamwork entails; consortium members could then agree on responsibilities, tasks, milestones, and credit within initial meetings (Lam, 2015).”

“…problems, much of the advice to faculty has focused on the idea of educating team members in the fundamentals of team dynamics and communication (Lam, 2015), creating effective student peer evaluations (Jassawalla and Sashittal, 2017), and improving the process of assigning students to teams…”

“Furthermore, previous studies have found that while students routinely view group work negatively (Pope-Ruark, Eichel, Talbott, & Thornton, 2011; Smith et al., 2011), students who work in Scrum sprints attribute Scrum practices to successful collaborations (Pope-Ruark, 2012, 2015).”

“, transformational or empowering) leadership has been recognized as a key antecedent of group effectiveness in the long term (Campbell & Lam, 2019; Carson et al., 2007; Dulebohn et al., 2012; Lam, 2015).”

“Lam (2015) determined the influence of communication quality and task cohesion on social loafing.”

“In today's workplace, organizational justice has garnered much attention due to its association with desired employee behavioral 18 THE BATUK : A Peer Reviewed Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol. 10 Issue No.2 July 2024 outcomes (Shrestha, 2019, 2016a; 2015).”

“TPC teachers have long advocated the use of charters when working with student teams [7], [8], [30].”

“In other studies (cf., Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012; Lam, 2015; Russo & Benson, 2005) affective, emotional and autonomy presences have been proposed as additions to complement or advance the CoI framework; however, the call for learning or learner presence to be added seems to be most…”

“Lam (2015) suggests that one way to reduce social loafing is to increase the quality of communication and the cohesion of tasks.”

“The 19 students who used Slack will be compared against a previously published study that examined a data set of 445 students [8].”

“Each challenge can be addressed by instructors through articulating how the assignment will be graded, the use of peer evaluations, and requirement to use a discussion forum to track each members’ participation (Perron 2011; Stevens 2007).”

“Individuals often choose to fail at a task instead of exerting additional effort to carry the load of a less-engaged peer (Lam, 2015).”

“Consistent with prior findings (e.g., Lam, 2015; Sagayno et al., 2023), asynchronous communication has the potential to increase social loafing, if peer interaction is not intentionally built-in to the group work experience.”

“Furthermore, foster - ing open communication and carefully designing shared reward systems can enhance collaboration, provided they do not encourage minimal effort (Lam 2015; Pearsall et al. 2010).”

“…of others while not contributing oneself) [7] and social loafing (doing less work in a team setting than one would otherwise do on one’s own) [8] have been identified as two common factors capable of undermining a team’s effectiveness and leading to negative experiences for team members [9].”

“Empirical studies have reported that there is a negative relationship between perceived loafing and group outcomes such as individual effort, group cohesion, group affective tone, or group members’ satisfaction [2, 3, 14, 17, 25, 33, 40].”

“In educational settings, low interpersonal cohesiveness can cause uneven work efforts (including social loafing) and resentment, undermining performance quality and student learning outcomes (Lam, 2015).”

“Similarly, group work can provide practical applications of course concepts and enable students to engage in more practical experiences prior to entering the job market (Lam, 2015).”

“This is in line with Lam (2015) ’ s study that stated the quality of communication and cohesiveness in finishing group task significantly decrease social loafing by 53%.”

“In other words, if a person knows that his individual performance is visible in the group, he will try harder (Lam, 2015).”

“Social loafing occurs when an individual’s contribution to a group effort diminishes due to low motivation, thus impacting both work performance and learning performance (Lam, 2015; Piezon and Donaldson, 2005).”

“Kelompok dengan jumlah besar pun ikut serta dalam meningkatkan social loafing di mana anggota kelompok mungkin menganggap bahwa orang lain akan menangani beban kerja (Lam, 2015), sehingga mengurangi motivasi pribadi.”

“In addition, social cohesion and learners' engagement in a safe space significantly improve communication quality and positively influence task performance (Lam, 2015; Riisla et al., 2021).”

“Improved communication among students group members also strengthens cohesion, which can reduce social loafing (Lam, 2015).”

“This is consistent with previous studies which describe how instructors ’ failure to clearly communicate student expectations compounds the effects of social loafing in groups and leads to greater student dissatisfaction (Hall and Buzwell, 2013; Lam, 2015).”