Team Size, Dispersion, and Social Loafing in Technology-Supported Teams: A Perspective on the Theory of Moral Disengagement

Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to withhold contributions to a task in a team setting. team size and dispersion are two primary drivers of social loafing in technology-supported team settings. However, the mechanisms through which 204 alNuaIMI, rObErt, aND MaruPINg these drivers affect social loafing are not well understood. Consequently, the objective of this study is to identify the cognitive mechanisms that mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing in technology-supported teams. Drawing on the theory of moral disengagement, we posit that three primary cognitive mechanisms— diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization—will mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing. We conducted a laboratory study involving 140 students randomly assigned to 32 teams performing a brainstorming task using group systems software. the results show that diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization all mediate (partially) the effects of team size on social loafing. Meanwhile, only dehumanization mediates (fully) the effect of dispersion on social loafing. key wOrds and Phrases: computer-mediated communication, creativity, electronic brainstorming, idea generation, individuals in teams, social loafing, team performance, team productivity, technology-mediated collaborative environments, technologysupported team efficacy, theory of moral disengagement, virtual collaboration, virtual teams. OrganizatiOns are increasingly relying On teams to make important decisions. the emergence of teams as an intraand interorganizational structure is driven in part by two factors. First, teams often have more, and better, informational resources than individuals [26]. Initially, this advantage was viewed as a luxury that organizations could use at their convenience. However, with globalization today, decisions are often so complex and diverse that they require the creativity, knowledge, and experience that only a team could possess. Second, the advent of new information and communication technologies (ICts) has allowed organizations to assemble their most capable individuals on an as-needed basis regardless of their physical location [12, 76, 84, 85]. an implicit assumption underlying these two factors is that people will contribute as much in team settings as they do when working alone. However, prior research has shown that under certain conditions individuals tend to contribute less in team settings than as individuals (e.g., [19, 34, 97]). the tendency of individuals to withhold contributions in a team setting is referred to as social loafing [46, 56]. a lack of social control, direct supervision, and increases in team size have been identified as facilitating conditions for social loafing in collocated face-to-face teams [56, 61, 73]. the dispersed settings of many technology-supported teams were expected to reduce social control and direct supervision and increase social loafing in those teams [19, 85, 97]. Chidambaram and tung [19] provided and empirically tested a specific model of social loafing in technology-supported teams and confirmed that team size and dispersion were indeed the two primary drivers of social loafing. Even though this prior work offers an important theoretical foundation, there remain significant theoretical and practical gaps in the literature. From a theoretical standpoint, there have been limited empirical attempts at understanding the mediating mechanisms through which these two key predictors—size and dispersion—influence tEaM SIzE, DISPErSION, aND SOCIal lOaFINg IN tECHNOlOgy-SuPPOrtED tEaMS 205 social loafing. From a pragmatic perspective, team size is often driven by decision complexity, and technology-supported teams are, in many cases, dispersed. thus, managers have little, if any, control over these structural factors. Consequently, we believe that one way to advance this literature is to examine the mediating mechanisms that intervene between the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing. the identification of key mediating factors is an important stepping-stone to designing interventions to curtail the incidence of social loafing in technology-supported teams. It is broadly recognized that cognitions play an important part in driving individual behavior [35]. Santanen et al. [87] revealed the importance of team members’ cognitions on their performance and productivity. thus, an examination of the cognitions that potentially underlie social loafing in team settings is a natural starting point for understanding mediating mechanisms. the objective of this study is to identify the cognitive mechanisms that mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing. to accomplish this, we employ the theory of moral disengagement. this theory has been used to explain why individuals knowingly choose to engage in socially inappropriate/delinquent behavior when they understand it is wrong to do so [5, 9]. the theory of moral disengagement, therefore, provides a useful theoretical lens for understanding why certain team settings facilitate a specific form of antisocial behavior—social loafing. Drawing on this theory, we posit that three primary cognitive mechanisms—diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization— will mediate the effect of team size and dispersion on social loafing. We report on a laboratory study involving 140 students randomly assigned to 32 teams performing a brainstorming task using group systems software. roughly half of the teams (17 teams) were assigned to work in a collocated setting and the remaining (15 teams) in a dispersed setting. the results show that diffusion of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization all mediate (partially) the effects of team size on social loafing. Meanwhile, only dehumanization mediates (fully) the effect of dispersion on social loafing. the results of this study make several important contributions to both the technology-supported team and social loafing literatures. First, this research contributes to the technology-supported team and social loafing literature by identifying a set of cognitive mediating mechanisms through which team size and dispersion influence social loafing. Previous studies have not developed such a cross-level understanding of how team-level structures affect individual team member cognitions and behavior. a second contribution of this work is the extension of the theory of moral disengagement to the domain of technology-supported teams. by contextualizing the theory to this domain, we were able to identify team size and dispersion as key factors that facilitate antisocial behavior in social settings. Finally, the results of this research contribute to the extant literature by demonstrating that team size and team dispersion affect social loafing through slightly different cognitive mechanisms. theoretical background a significant PrOPOrtiOn Of the sOcial lOafing literature has been examined in the context of traditional (face-to-face) team research. thus, we first provide an overview 206 alNuaIMI, rObErt, aND MaruPINg of this extant literature before turning to recent studies on social loafing in technologysupported teams. Social loafing in traditional teams researchers have been interested in the phenomenon of social loafing for almost a century, starting with Maximilien ringelmann in 1913 [51]. Social loafing has been consistently shown to occur in team settings, even in different contexts and with various tasks, such as pumping air [51], negotiating simple mazes [42], swimming [107], brainstorming [38], and decision making [77]. Several theories have been proposed to explain social loafing. these include (1) the “social impact” theory, which asserts that the main cause of social loafing is the social forces that arise from team interactions [54]; (2) the “output equity” theory, which asserts that when individuals work in teams, they adjust their level of output to the level they perceive other members are producing [50]; (3) the “matching-to-standard” theory, which proposes the lack of standards for expected performance levels as an explanation for loafing [98]; and (4) the “absence of evaluation apprehension” theory, which states that social loafing occurs when the task is simple and uninteresting, and individual performance is unrecognized due to pooled output [51]. karau and Williams [46] developed a unified theory that integrated most of the earlier theories in what they called “the collective effort model.” their model suggests that individuals’ willingness to exert effort on a team task depends on their expectations of the instrumentality of their efforts in obtaining valuable outcomes. they conducted a meta-analysis of 78 social loafing studies and found social loafing to be moderate in magnitude and generalizable across different tasks and populations. a number of moderators were found to affect the relationship between teamwork and social loafing. these include identifiability and accountability [34], evaluation potential [39], cohesion [47], and identification with the team [48]. Social loafing in technology-Supported teams Information systems (IS) researchers have devoted considerable attention to the problem of social loafing and productivity loss in technology-supported teams, especially in the context of electronic brainstorming (e.g., [19, 28, 33, 74, 92, 97, 99, 104, 110]). However, social loafing is not a phenomenon that is confined to brainstorming tasks. Indeed, social loafing has emerged in technology-supported teams performing other types of tasks as well. For example, Mcavoy and butler [66] found that social loafing is a major problem for technology-supported teams working on agile software development tasks. Further, some researchers have argued, and provided empirical evidence, that social loafing is more pronounced in knowledge teams, because knowledge is implicit and, therefore, easy to conceal [59]. From the above-cited studies, two factors have consistently emerged as major antecedents of social loafing or productivity loss in technology-supported teams—team size and dispersion [19]. tEaM SIzE, DISPErSION, aND SOCIal lOaFINg IN tECHNOlOgy-SuPPOrtED tEaMS 207