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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Team work or social loafing?

At most organizations conventional wisdom is that working in groups is more productive than individual work. Yet, research on teamwork shows it can actually inhibit or even damage productivity.

One reason is that under the cover of group work people are less productive, sometimes even satisfied that others are the same — a behaviour coined "social loafing" by a French professor, Max Ringelmann who studied groups in the 1890s.