By Diya Sompura | 22-23

Social loafing is a destructive behavior in which an individual puts in less effort than necessary
on a work task and hence passes it on to others in a team (Baron & Branscombe, 2006). This
has often come with a huge cost to companies where a recent study examined how social
loafing behavior can cost an organisation via high turnover intentions among employees. This
often serves as an impediment to team effectiveness where the group dynamics is chaotic and
people just want to “hide in the crowd”. Today, work teams have become an indispensable part
of working as many organisations run on the idea that “teamwork makes the dream work”.
However, managers often ignore the presence of certain shifting conditions that occur in the
group which makes it less productive. One of them can be termed a relationship or interpersonal
conflict. This is caused when members experience incompatibility towards their team often
leading to feelings of hostility, aggression, etc. towards each other (Simons & Peterson, 2000).
This type of conflict has often been linked to surfacing of negative emotions, unpleasant group
climate and withdrawal behavior among members. As people are social beings and interacting
in a social setting like a team, transmission of emotions as stated as emotional contagion is
evidenced to occur. This “catching” of emotions has been labeled as emotional contagion where
people tend to mimic other people’s moods consciously or unconsciously. However, this often
differs with people’s tendency of susceptibility with some ranking high or low in it. Another
factor involves how the tone of the group is influenced by a conflict situation and how this
might cause people to loaf further.

This study aimed to explore this interrelation between conflict, group affective tone and
emotional contagion and its association with social loafing. Limited studies have sought to
focus on individual-level distinctions such as susceptibility to EC dwelling into why certain
individuals tend to get tangled in it and why does tone of the group form a part in causing
members to loaf.

The methodology used in this study was quantitative where responses were collected from
employees who had worked or are currently working in a team. They also had to have faced
any disagreements during that period. These respondents were recruited from online platforms
such as Facebook and LinkedIn. 102 responses were collected and later analysed using a
software.

Interpretations of the findings
One of study’s main findings was to discover that conflict did have an impact on the tone or
climate of the group. The results also revealed that emotional contagion and conflict did
influence social loafing behavior. This meant that events being emotionally laden such as
conflicts tend to cause emotional reactions thus in turn impacting the climate of the group.
When members experience unpleasant emotions post-conflict each member through their
interactions with others might pass it on to others to the point where the group is converging to a particular emotion. In addition to this, the pathway of social loafing being influenced by
conflict was not surprising given conflicts are associated with avoidance behaviors in members.
Specifically, in some cases, it might also promote feelings of envy and has often been
considered detrimental due to its long-lasting effects such as a reduction in psychological
detachment impairing the recovery process, a negative mood at work, etc (Mier et al, 2013).
This type of stress often leads to reduced performance on the team due to increased arousal in
members and a narrowing of focus.

Emotions among this play a pivotal role in shaping behaviors of members. High-intensity
events like conflict tend to capture people’s attention quickly and people start to interpret it.
Individuals who are high in susceptibility to catching emotions might more likely pass it on to
others causing negative feelings to spiral within the group. They tend to share and express their
feelings to other group members which also make other people feel lazy and pass on work.
What can organisations do?

Conflict in today’s day is inevitable due to increasing workforce diversity in terms of culture,
sex, ethnicity, ideas, etc (Robbins & Judge, 2013). However, when managers or policymakers
can learn about factors associated with conflict then precautionary steps can be taken at the
outset rather than letting it go down a destructive path. Managers can conduct a session with
a group where each member first reflects on the ongoing group dynamics stating how they
feel about being part of it. Secondly, members interact and share their views leading to
‘advocacy’ and voicing out their perspectives. Lastly, when everyone has heard about
everyone’s opinions, members can be trained to ask open-ended questions to others regarding
their views to dwell deep into another’s perspective. It is also advisable that work coaches or
group coaching sessions where people can understand the origins of their emotions,
especially during relationship conflict where the focus is on targeting people. Training
sessions can be held where the expertise of enhancing one’s political skills can be learned.

Final thoughts
Today, different types of teams have emrged such as virtual teams, self-managd teams etc and
it becomes more than necessary to dwell into effective functioning of it.Thus. employing
various forms of team-building exercises promotes a positive tone in the group. This can help
foster prosocial behavior among team members where individuals feel less inclined to ‘hide in
the crowd’.

References
Social psychology (11th ed.). Boston:
Baron, R. A., Byrne, D., & Branscombe, N. R. (2006). Pearson
George, J. M. (n.d.-b). Personality, Affect, and Behavior in Groups.
Jehn, K. A. (1995). A Multimethod Examination of the Benefits and Detriments of Intragroup
Conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(2), 256. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393638
Yang, J., & Mossholder, K. W. (2004). Decoupling task and relationship conflict: The role of
intragroup emotional processing. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(5), 589–605.
https://doi.org/10.1002/job.258
Sanyal, S., & Hisam, M. W. (n.d.). The Impact of Teamwork on Work Performance of Employees:
A Study of Faculty Members in Dhofar University.

By Victoria Alvarez | 22-23

An investigative study was done to see how workers’ relationship to the Imposter Phenomenon affects other aspects of their lives such as work satisfaction and well-being. The other primary goal of the study is to see how generation may moderate this relationship from the perspective of Generation Z versus the previous generational cohorts. In the world of work, two-thirds (70%) of working professionals have experienced feeling like an imposter at one point in their careers (Cummins 2013).

The Imposter Phenomenon (IP) is an under-researched behavioral and organizational psychology sector that can inhibit employees of all organizations and backgrounds. The term was first coined by Clance and Imes’ (Clance & Imes 1978) and describes individuals being guided by the mis-fueled belief that they ended up in esteemed positions of employment not because of their competency, but because of luck or oversight from the organisation (Feenstra & Begeny 2020). It was found that those high in IP do not have coping mechanisms that other employees with more resources have, causing the IP sufferer to experience more physically and mentally unpleasant experiences. A major component of the Imposter Phenomenon is fear of negative evaluation (Thompson et al., 2000 ). These individuals fear the feedback or criticism they may receive and are not eager to complete a task or fulfill a goal for fear of failure or being uncovered as inadequate workers. The IP dominating thoughts in one’s mind will continue to promote those intense feelings of fraudulence when facing an achievement-related task and is linked to lower well-being ratings. This study utilised an online cross-sectional survey with 376 participants from ( after cleaning n=277), the UK, the US, and Europe. Participants were divided into two groups, Generation Z (N=167 ) and the previous cohorts(n=110 ). The first hypothesis stated that workplace satisfaction will be positively associated with well-being, which will then be moderated by generation. The hypothesis was supported when a positive relationship was found, between work satisfaction and well-being. Previous works such as Judge & Klinger 2008,  where they found work satisfaction and well-being both positively and reciprocally related, have substantiated the findings of this report. Generational cohorts did not moderate the relationship as hypothesised.  The second hypothesis stated that the Imposter Phenomenon would have a negative association with work satisfaction was not supported by the results. A non-significant coefficient was found in the regression and then a moderated regression for Generation was conducted with nonsignificant results. These results were a bit surprising as based on previous research it would be assumed that the more one dealt with experiences of the Imposter Phenomenon, the greater they would suffer and in turn their work. The hypothesis was built on the foundation of work satisfaction being correlated to two main components in life; affective (feeling and emotions) and cognitive (comparison and judgment) (Othman et al. 2020). Based on these two components that make up work satisfaction, IP has been known to weaken one’s belief in their cognitive abilities and also cloud their judgments with feelings of unworthiness and helplessness. Also, previous studies have shown that IP impacts the workplace by decreasing one’s job satisfaction (Hutchins et al 2017). My findings did not concur with previous results may be due to the item’s work satisfaction being measured by the previous studies’ survey. This survey was based on work satisfaction based on intrinsic and extrinsic ideals and their study focused more on motivators of work satisfaction.  The final hypothesis on whether  IP would negatively affect one’s well-being was partially supported.  Analysis shows that IP is negatively associated with well-being and generation did not moderate the relationship. One possible theory of well-being that may shed light on why we came to these results is the way well-being is construed and understood by each participant. This could also mean that although older generations say they are experiencing IP at high levels but because they are so stable, they do not fear for the future or feel negatively towards their work.

A concept that seems thematically relevant to this research and could lead to developing practical interventions in an organisation is the idea of the employee-job fit model. This model aims to place employees in proper positions that align with their skills and beliefs, with the aim of attaining job satisfaction as well as work engagement and performance (Truxillo et al 2012). This can be expanded upon through recruitment restructures and the types of participant pools they are seeking for roles. Organisations continuously strive for proper fit by introducing flags in recruitment and placement for IP and other attributes that may affect an employee, placing in guidance and group training sessions to alleviate these pressures.

When looking at how to help the newer generation integrate into work life and the environment a practical implication that may be useful to upper management and hiring staff to ensure alignment is redefining what entry-level jobs mean for your organisation. (O’Boyle et al 2017).With the evolution of technology, entry-level work needs to evolve with it. This may be re-evaluating an organization’s procedure for talent acquisition, such as the algorithms they use to shortlist applicants and broaden the search by looking for transferable skills instead of hard technical skills(Benítez-Márquez et al. 2022). The Imposter phenomenon is proven to promote intense feelings of fraudulence when an individual faces an achievement-related task (Vergauwe et al 2015), so providing open and honest feedback to an employee can help relieve these feelings. Organisations are the ones who hold power to support the influencers of poor mental health because they are shaping the resources that are being provided for employees to carry out their responsibilities (Panaccio & Vandenberghe 2009). Organisational support has been proven to moderate feelings of Imposter Phenomenon toward work satisfaction and well-being (Haar de Jong 2016). This study wished to further encourage organisations and management to help support and create programs to guide multi-generational workforces in a way that will be best received and improve work satisfaction as well as well-being satisfaction. By acknowledging and creating opportunities for employees to strengthen and learn coping mechanisms for fraudulent feelings, organisations may see a positive shift in oth workforce and productivity.