Comparison of On-line Class to a Team
MGMT 591 Keller

In this response I will discuss social loafing, group development and comparing our class to a team or group.

Social loafing occurs when people work less hard in groups than they would individually.
An effective team/group according to the text is one that achieves a high level of task performance, member satisfaction and team viability.
One of the Keller student mottos: "you get out what you put in" relates to avoiding social loafing in the online community. Ways to social loaf:
1. wait until others post in a discussion to avoid doing any of the initial foot work--then you can just comment on someone else's work and still engage in the discussion.
2. Only read what the professor writes and answer his/her queries and questions, avoiding interacting with the other team members and thereby not really gaining anything through the process of discussion.
3. avoid reading the textbook on a deep and intimate level by cruising around the message board and picking up the application of the material--as you know this is how you will be tested anyhow!

The text uses the show Survivor as an example. One contestant who wasn't very physically able is simply to mind the fire overnight, but doesn't and sleeps instead, knowing that one of the others will "cover" for him anyway. Although the tasks gets done, his social loafing jeopardized his role and eventually his respect by the others and he was voted out of the tribe.
The text suggests that team leaders can avoid encouraging social loafing by:
1. keeping group size small
2. redefining roles so that free-riders are more visible and peer pressures to perform are more likely
3. increasing accountability by making individual performance expectations clear and specific
4. making rewards directly contingent on an individual’s performance contributions.

I did some outside research within and outside of our text (Schermerhorn, John R.. Organizational Behavior, 12th Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 11/2011) on group development in order to compare this to our class and found a catchy article reviewing and enhancing Tuckman's original 1965 hypothesis that group development include "forming", "storming", "norming" and "performing" to also include "adjourning" which he apparently added in 1977.
In Tuckman and Jensen's 2010 revision to this 1965 article "Integrated Theoretical Model for Building Effective Teams" (Advances in Developing Human Resources. February 1, 2010 12: 7-28), they describe these stages which I've summarized here:
Forming--group members identify themselves as part of the group with the expectation that there will be a task or tasks to perform with an end goal shared among each group member. This is the beginning of team work.
Storming is the brain-storming process whereby input is gathered from each group member and communication begins to identify and develop the work of the group, establishing strengths and weakness of members are starting to create a vision of the final product or task. Different ideas compete for consideration and dialogue begins to heat up.
Norming is the development of the process of the group--typical interactions, communications, the pace and stride of the group and the culture of the team develop as a norm.
Performing is meeting objectives along the way toward the end goal.
Adjourning is finalizing the task, reviewing the process, providing feedback or debriefing and then concluding the business of the group. This may also be referred to as a "mourning" stage.
Our class is a group/team. In our first week we began the stages of forming. As discussion started to take place, we entered into the storming process. As we get a feel for the way the class works and the online personality of our esteemed professor--good guy? bad guy? present/absent? available? --the norming process begins--where we are now. As we get closer to the final project and exam, we continue into the performing stages--although we have already begun this in conjunction with norming given the LSI paper and proposal of last week. Finally at the end of the class we will adjourn and likely mourn the end of the journey.

(Schermerhorn 11/2011)
Schermerhorn, John R.. (11/2011). Organizational Behavior, 12th Edition. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from .