Social Loafing

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MGT 2530 Final Exam
2. What are teams? (2 points) How are they different from groups? (2 points) What are the barriers to effective teams? (2 points). What is groupthink? (1 point) What is social loafing and why does it occur in a group context? (2 points) What can you do to prevent social loafing? (1 point).
A team is a group of people who come together for a specific purpose. Teams are helpful in performing difficult, time-consuming tasks. Some examples of teams include sports teams, teams to complete tasks at the workplace etc. The size and composition of a team is decided upon depending on the task at hand.
A group is simply a collection of two or more individuals who interact with each other and have a sense of collective unity. Groups …show more content…

By having a workforce of individuals with different backgrounds and life experiences, more ideas are generated during the decision making process. This results in having decisions that are not only creative but are high in quality. In addition, having a multi-demographic workforce helps the company relate to a diverse crowd of people and create products or services that can better fit the needs of individuals within different demographics. These diverse individuals will understand the tastes and preferences of others like them and will be able to act accordingly with their business strategies. For instance, if a chip company hires an employee with an Asian background, they might create chip flavors that would attract other Asian individual’s similar tastes. Diversity can also positively impact satisfaction and performance in the workplace. The staff of a company will feel more comfortable working in a diverse setting where they feel they are being treated equally. This sense of equality ultimately leads to higher performance and studies have shown that having a diverse workforce is positively related to high …show more content…

A lot of people notice a phenomenon where one does not treat others fairly if they appear to be “different” from them. This occurs most commonly because of the similarity-attraction phenomenon. What this means is that people are more attracted to others who look similar to themselves. It is not that one is intentionally discriminating against one who is not “of the same kind” rather, they happen to get along and feel more comfortable around someone who they feel they can relate to.
This can be a major issue in the workplace because it is possible that a manager, unknowingly, can treat one employee different than another merely because one looks more similar to themselves. Another example of how this phenomenon can lead to discrimination by a hiring manager, is if they were choosing candidates for a position, they may hire the candidate who resembles themselves even if he or she has less skills and experience than the candidate who appears

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