Withholding Effort in Organizations: Toward ... - Springer Link

Journal of Business and Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 4, Summer 2003 (2003)

WITHHOLDING EFFORT IN ORGANIZATIONS: TOWARD DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MEASURE Roland E. Kidwell Jr. Chet Robie Niagara University

ABSTRACT: Field research into the topic of withholding effort and its variants (shirking, loafing, free riding, and job neglect) has been limited due to a lack of measures that are applicable to organizational settings. This study used a multiphase process to ascertain a measure of withholding effort that can be used in organizational settings. Items were generated through literature review and discussions with practitioners; culled by the authors; and tested in a field study in multiple, diverse organizations. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found the construct of withholding effort to be multidimensional, but not necessarily as previous theoretical work in the area would suggest. Correlations of the various dimensions of withholding effort scales with existing scales tapping a wide range of employee attitudes were consistent with a priori expectations. Implications for the use of these scales in future workplace research and their practical application in organizations are discussed. KEY WORDS: withholding effort; social loafing; shirking; neglect; free riding.

Designing effective work groups is a major focus of management theory and practice because successful interaction and effective performance of group members often result in a successful organization (e.g., Collins & Porras, 1994; Hackman, 1992; Keller, 2001; Lawler, Mohrman & Ledford, 1995; Weldon, 2000). Individual effort provided by employees while working in groups is a major factor that may enhance or impede the effective design and management of work teams and the perAddress correspondence to Roland E. Kidwell Jr., Department of Commerce, College of Business, Niagara University, Niagara University, NY 14109; [email protected]. 537 0889-3268/03/0600-0537/0  2003 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

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formance of individuals, groups and the organization (Katzenbach & Smith, 1994). For years, research has focused on the factors that motivate employees to provide effort that would benefit themselves and their organizations (e.g., Vroom, 1964; Adams, 1965; Locke, Shaw, Saari & Latham, 1981; Tubbs, 1986). An alternative focal point for research is how and why employees withhold effort rather than provide it. In the literature, this phenomenon has alternately been termed free riding (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985), social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993; Mulvey & Klein, 1998a, 1998b), shirking (Judge & Chandler, 1996), and job neglect (Leck & Saunders, 1992). Field research into the overarching topic of withholding effort has been limited by a lack of reliable and valid measures of withholding effort. Although it is a relatively simple matter to measure effort in a laboratory setting through the use of shouting experiments, rope tugging and other activities, it is more difficult and complicated to measure withholding effort in a field setting (e.g., Kidwell, 1995). Sound scales concerning this important phenomenon are needed because questionnaires are the most frequently used means to collect field data and, in general, reliability and validity problems with measures have created difficulty in interpreting results (Hinkin, 1995). To remedy the problem of conducting research on withholding effort in field settings, this study develops and tests scales to measure employee propensity to withhold effort. Propensity to withhold effort has been defined as “the likelihood that an individual will give less than full effort on a job-related task” (Kidwell & Bennett, 1993, pp. 429–430). The effort decrement can occur in various forms. These include an employee’s rational decision to lower effort because his or her performance cannot be discretely observed and an employee’s emotional decision to hold back effort because of negative feelings about the group and/or the organization. Withholding effort can also include an employee’s decision not to provide any effort because he or she will receive the same benefits whether or not any effort is given, or an employee’s choice to lower effort because doing so will not result in negative consequences for the employee. The study of withholding effort and its forms has occurred across disciplines. Social loafing, focusing on effort-lowering behavior and its perception in task groups, has been identified chiefly with social psychology and management. Free riding, focusing on failure to contribute effort in the provision of public goods, has been studied in sociology and economics. Shirking, which focuses on holding back full effort, has been traditionally identified with economics; and job neglect, withdrawal from job duties, with psychology and management. Previous research has seen a frequent overlap among the terms, particularly free riding and loafing (Jones, 1984; Shepperd, 1993), including a tendency in some cases to use the terms interchangeably. Contextual

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differences among the concepts should be clarified. Shirking focuses on individual contribution of effort to complete a task. Social loafing involves holding back effort toward completion of a group task or project. Free riding is failure to make any contribution to completing a task because the individual can enjoy the results (benefits) without doing so. Finally, job neglect involves employee withdrawal from performing jobrelated duties. A literature review suggests that these phenomena are closely related but distinct from each other and even debatably distinct from occupying the low end of a continuum of providing effort at work. This is so despite similarities with the concept of contextual performance (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). Contextual performance examines positive performance contributions beyond task effort, including organizational citizenship and prosocial behaviors. Dimensions of withholding effort are expected to negatively correlate with such behaviors, but are not easily placed along a performance continuum. Whereas social loafing and free riding, as described, could be interpreted as special cases of a general concept such as shirking, our reading of the literature leads us to start with the following underlying assumptions: A multidimensional concept (withholding effort) includes shirking, free riding, social loafing, and neglect dimensions, and proposed relationships of antecedent variables to one of the dimensions should generally hold for all of them. Scales that purport to measure these phenomena have been published, but procedures used to develop the scales have sometimes not been addressed. This study attempts to follow stages and procedures in scale development described by Hinkin (1995, 1998), reevaluating items used in past research related to withholding effort and developing measures that will assist future study of the topic.

CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND Previous research on shirking, social loafing, free riding, and job neglect should be examined to delineate similarities and differences among these concepts and to show their relationship to the overarching concept of withholding effort on job-related tasks. This section provides an overview of these concepts including definitions, relationships of the concepts to other variables, past attempts to measure the underlying constructs, and a brief summary of previous findings. Shirking Shirking has been defined as a tendency for workers to give less than full effort on the job (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985), and a lack of employee work effort (Judge & Chandler, 1996). A great deal of shirking

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research has taken place in economics, particularly focused on the payment of above market wages to increase the cost of job loss and to discourage shirking in situations when it is difficult for management to directly monitor employees (Krueger, 1991; Cappelli & Chauvin, 1991). Shirking has been measured through use of questionnaire measures in which employees are asked to report how often they had given less than 100 percent effort in the past, their intentions to give 100 percent in the future, how often they perform duties not formally required (Judge & Chandler, 1996), and visibility of employee performance. Supervisors have also been queried about subordinates and their shirking activities, but such measures assume that the supervisor can effectively observe the worker’s activities. Variables related to shirking include job satisfaction and dispositional affect (Judge & Chandler, 1996). Alchian and Demsetz (1972) suggested that employees will have more incentive to shirk when working as part of a team than when they work alone. By monitoring the input (i.e., effort) an individual worker puts into performance, shirking can be addressed in team activities where individual output is more difficult to observe. Social Loafing Social loafing is a tendency to reduce one’s effort when working collectively (i.e., in groups) compared with individually on the same task (Latane´, Williams & Harkins, 1979). A recent development of the social loafing construct is to consider the perception of loafing in the group: that fellow group members are providing less effort than they could to the group’s activities (Comer, 1995; Mulvey & Klein, 1998a). Perceptions of contextual variables that influence social loafing (George, 1992) are said to be distinct from social loafing in that social loafing refers to actual effort reduced rather than a perception that effort is being reduced, and actual effort reduced may not be perceived by others (cf. Kidwell & Bennett, 1993; Mulvey & Klein, 1998a). Social loafing has been measured in laboratory studies in a variety of ways, including cheerleading (Harkins, Latane´ & Williams, 1980), pulling on a rope (Ingham, Levinger, Graves & Peckham, 1974), swimming a 100-yard freestyle as part of a four-member relay team (Miles & Greenberg, 1993), cognitive evaluative tasks (Weldon & Gargano, 1985; Weldon & Mustari, 1988), and working cooperatively on in-basket simulations (Earley, 1989, 1993). Perceived loafing reflects personal feelings about others in the group as well as a person’s own actual performance. Social loafing and free riding, as measured in the laboratory, involve actual effort being reduced rather than a perception that others working with an individual are lowering effort levels. Previous research regarding perceptions of loafing


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has used questionnaires asking whether the individual member of the group is trying as hard as he or she can, putting in less effort than others, whether members of the group are trying as hard as they can, whether they are freeloaders, whether they are contributing less than anticipated, and are doing the best they can (George, 1992; Mulvey & Klein, 1998a, 1998b). Variables negatively related theoretically and empirically to social loafing in previous research include group size, perceived task visibility, intrinsic motivation, group cohesion, perceived altruism and distributive justice (Everett, Smith, & Williams, 1992; George, 1992, Jones, 1984; Kidwell & Bennett, 1993). Limiting contributions in a desire to conform to group norms is positively correlated to loafing (Veiga, 1991). This study focuses on the individual’s perceptions of his or her own effort level rather than that of other group members. Free Riding Free riding is a tendency for individuals either to fail to participate in collectively profitable activities in the absence of coercion or other individual inducements, or to gain the benefit from the actions of others without providing their own effort (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985; Stigler, 1974). The key factor in the free riding concept is the existence of an indivisible public good, and those involved in the group believe they cannot be denied a share of the good no matter whether they put forth little, or zero, effort. For example, a safe and healthy work environment can’t be divided and given only to those who endeavor to make the work place safe; if any strive for it and achieve it, all must receive it. Public goods could also include low production costs, academic committee work output, group class project grades or planning and executing a company party. The sociological perspective on free riding and collective activity focuses on group solidarity and norms within the group. Members in unified groups feel an obligation to behave in ways consistent with the group’s norms of acceptable conduct as they strive to obtain public goods. Through repeated interaction, individuals establish a norm of fair dealing (Stroebe & Frey, 1982) that they believe they should follow even if not threatened with adverse circumstances should they fail to comply. Therefore, people working in groups may provide effort, or free ride, not based on receiving any positive or negative result, but because they believe a norm says it is the right thing to do. Variables that explain more than material incentives or self-interest are important to the study of free riding (Knoke, 1990, Kidwell & Bennett, 1993). Altruism and norms of compliance and fairness suggest an important role of informal control through social pressure in shaping the decision of individuals to free ride or provide effort.

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Free riding, as such, has rarely been studied in work settings and has not been measured by use of structured questionnaires. Instead, simulated market transactions and experiments involving an individual’s decision whether to invest in a public good while member of a group (Marwell & Ames, 1979, 1980, 1981) or whether to donate blood in a campus drive (Condie, Warner & Gillman, 1976) have been used. Job Neglect Job neglect has been defined as a tendency to passively allow conditions at work to deteriorate through reduced interest or effort, chronic lateness or absences, use of company time for personal business (Leck & Saunders, 1992), or working more slowly (Rusbult, Farrell, Rogers & Mainous, 1988). Job neglect appears to reflect other concepts of withholding effort in more specific manifestations and is considered a passive response to job dissatisfaction. Individuals who neglect their jobs instead focus on non-work interests and do nothing active about their work situation (Withey & Cooper, 1989). Job neglect has been measured by asking respondents how much they avoid work by talking to co-workers, provide less effort than they know they can, deliberately avoid the boss, take more and longer breaks than permitted and show up late for work (Leck & Saunders, 1992). Making more errors, putting lower effort into the assigned job, and making rude comments to the supervisor (Rusbult et al., 1988) are also seen as manifestations of neglect. Variables negatively related to job neglect include high levels of satisfaction with a variety of factors including work, supervision, pay, promotion and co-workers. Neglect, in contrast with exit, loyalty and voice (Hirschman, 1970), is seen as a destructive, yet passive, response to dissatisfaction with a job (Leck & Saunders, 1992). Loyalty to the organization, a constructive and passive response to dissatisfaction, is negatively related to neglect. Organizational commitment is also negatively related to job neglect (Withey & Cooper, 1989), whereas the affective component of organizational commitment is positively correlated with overall job performance and promotability of employees (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer, Paunonen, Gellatly, Goffin & Jackson, 1989). A recent study found negative relationships between group cohesiveness, perceived altruism, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and both employee self-reports and supervisor reports of job neglect (Kidwell & Bennett, 2001). Proposed Hypotheses A variety of relationships between constructs that represent the propensity of employees to withhold effort on the job and other phenomena


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present in work groups have been theoretically proposed and empirically tested. A review of the literature summarized above provides the theoretical basis for several proposed relationships between contextual variables and the withholding of effort by individual employees. This study’s first focus is on the following elements of work group processes: employee perceptions of altruism, fairness, task visibility, group cohesion, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. All of these variables are expected to be negatively related to measures of withholding effort (WE) when these measures encompass shirking, loafing, free riding and job neglect. Previous research implies the following series of hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Perceived altruism in the group will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 2: Distributive justice will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 3: Perceived task visibility will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 4: Group cohesion will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 5: Job satisfaction will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 6: Affective commitment to the organization will be negatively related to WE. In addition, group members may limit their contributions to the group’s task in a desire to conform to group norms (Veiga, 1991). Pressures may exist within a group that lead individuals to hold back effort so as not to violate normative expectations and face sanctions by coworkers. For example, employees may fear retaliation if they put too much effort into a task or they may be intimidated into not providing full effort because of fears that co-workers will become angry with them. The bank wiring room in the Hawthorne studies appears to be a case in point. Hypothesis 7: Pressures to limit effort by conforming to group norms will be positively related to WE. Establishing a linkage between effort and performance is a basic element in explaining the motivation of employees to provide effort (Vroom, 1964). One would expect that if an employee perceives little relation between providing effort and successfully performing a job, that employee would not be motivated to provide effort. The lack of such linkage

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might also be expected to result in the employee lowering or reducing effort levels. If the perceived outcomes of working hard are unfavorable, i.e., there is low probability that providing effort will lead to good performance (Sims, Szilagyi & McKemey, 1976), there is little incentive to provide effort, and it is more likely that effort would be withheld. Hypothesis 8: Effort-performance expectancy will be negatively related to WE. In some work situations, employees cannot predict the outcomes of their behavior and they have little in the way of guidelines to indicate whether they are behaving appropriately. Such a condition has been termed role ambiguity (Rizzo, House & Lirtzman, 1970). When an employee reports higher levels of role ambiguity, he or she is less likely to understand how personal activities at work relate to the task at hand. If the employee clearly understands the role, the goals, and the procedures for performing successfully, it follows that the employee would be more likely to provide effort. Conversely, higher levels of role ambiguity and confusion about the work activity would lead the employee to lower effort levels, thus to a higher degree of withholding effort. Hypothesis 9: Role ambiguity will be positively related to WE. As noted earlier, an important antecedent to an employee’s willingness to provide effort is the relationship with other members within the group and how those others are perceived (Mulvey & Klein, 1998a). For example, group members do not appreciate doing their colleagues’ work and to combat free riding on the part of others, they will reduce their own efforts (Orbell & Dawes, 1981; Kerr, 1983; Mulvey & Klein, 1998a). Going beyond cohesiveness to place an additional focus on group processes and outcomes, another way to consider the effect of co-workers’ actions on the behavior of fellow employees is to examine the concept of peer leadership among the members (Taylor & Bowers, 1972). If employees do not perceive the quality of their relationships with their peers (coworkers) as supportive and helpful in getting the job done and meeting the group’s goals, they would be more likely to reduce effort levels. Peer leadership can be considered in four contexts: 1) the degree to which there is support for each other as members of the group, 2) the degree to which a goal emphasis exists in the group, 3) the degree to which group members help others improve performance (work facilitation), and 4) the degree to which group members work together within the group (interaction facilitation). A focus on getting the job accomplished and the presence of leadership among group members is expected to be negatively related to the level of effort withheld by individual group members.


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Hypothesis 10a: Peer leadership, in terms of support within the group, will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 10b: Peer leadership, in terms of goal emphasis within the group, will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 10c: Peer leadership, in terms of work facilitation within the group, will be negatively related to WE. Hypothesis 10d: Peer leadership, in terms of interaction facilitation within the group, will be negatively related to WE.

METHOD Introduction to Study Methodology A three-step process was followed to complete this study. First, a review of relevant theory and previous research and discussions with experts in business and academia were used to generate questionnaire items designed to encompass the content domain of the construct of interest. Second, we culled the resulting item pool to remove items that: (1) did not follow best practices in item generation (e.g., double-barreled items, above a high school reading level, or difficult to understand) (Hinkin, 1998), or (2) which were not applicable across industries or job classes (e.g., items that asked about customer service-related behaviors). In the third step, with the remaining items, we examined the dimensionality of the WE construct and the relationship of the proposed measure(s) with established measures of theoretically relevant attitudinal variables using a sample of employees from various organizational settings. Preliminary Work: Item Generation Over a period of several years, informal talks and unstructured interviews were conducted with more than 30 human resource managers, line managers and company executives in a variety of organizations about the topic of withholding effort in the workplace. The discussions focused on determining the types of behaviors that these private sector employers considered to be withholding effort in the context of their workplace. The industries represented in the preliminary interviews included both manufacturing and service sector companies, including several banks, factories that produced telephone and air conditioning equipment, and a nursing home. All of these were private for-profit orga-

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nizations. Patterns that emerged in the discussions with these practitioners were shared independently with five academic experts—professors or doctoral students in organizational behavior—who assisted in evaluating items that were generated from the practitioner interviews or adopted from previous research. The interviews led to an initial generation of 35 items. After evaluation by the academics, eleven of the items were judged either not to follow best practices in item writing or were specific to a certain industry or job class (e.g., customer service activities) so they were dropped. The remaining 24 items were administered to our sample. Sixteen of these items were drawn from previous research on social loafing, shirking or job neglect, and eight were original items related to free riding in the workplace. These eight original items attempted to address single issues of free riding, were written simply, and were worded consistently so a positive response to any proposed item would indicate higher levels of free riding thus avoiding potential problems associated with using negatively worded items (Harrison & McLaughlin, 1991). The earlier discussions with business people and academics combined with a literature review were used to generate items for the free riding component of withholding effort because previous research did not address scale development in this area. Examples of behaviors identified as free riding included use of company materials for personal use, lack of concern about keeping costs down, lack of concern about the reputation of the work group, and failure to keep the workplace clean. The 24 items are shown in the appendix. Items 15 and 16 were drawn from a study in which shirking was the focal variable (Judge & Chandler, 1996). Items 10 to 12 and 20 were adapted from a study in which social loafing was the relevant variable (George, 1992). The wording was changed to reflect self-report of the targeted behavior. Items 6 and 7, 13, 14, 17, and 21 to 23 were the free riding items developed by the joint efforts of the subject matter experts and the authors. Items 1, 8, 18, 19, and 24 were adapted from a study in which job neglect was the dependent variable (Leck & Saunders, 1992). Finally, items 2 to 5 and 9 came from research into social loafing in groups, which was also termed individual self-limiting behavior in the study in which the items were used (Price & Harrison, 1993); these items represented dimensions that were labeled in that study as inattention, carelessness, and withdrawal. All withholding effort items used a 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very frequently). The objectives of the next steps in the study were to further reduce the number of items if warranted, to test the psychometric properties of the measure(s) of withholding effort, and to examine the correlation of those measure(s) with other variables expected to relate to them.


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Sample and Procedure A convenience sample of employees from nine organizations located in the northeastern United States (total N = 724) participated in the field study—an insurance company (n = 23 or 3% of the sample), a bakery (n = 10 or 1% of the sample), an accounting firm (n = 51 or 7% of the sample), three hospitals (n = 165 or 23% of the sample), a military reserve base (n = 290 or 40% of the sample), a chemical manufacturer (n = 72 or 10% of the sample), and a manufacturer of automotive components (n = 113 or 16% of the sample). About 150 different job titles were identified for respondents across the organizations. About 75% of the respondents were surveyed away from their work stations with no company officials present (n = 539). The surveys took employees about 30 minutes to complete and were administered by one of the authors. About 25% of the total sample returned surveys to the researcher in a self-addressed stamped envelope (n = 185) because they were unable to attend sessions when surveys were distributed.1 The response rate for the mail-back questionnaires was 67%, which is in approximately the 80th percentile when compared to response rates for mailed surveys in other HRM/OB research (Roth & DeVier, 1998). Respondents were asked to answer the items by considering how they applied to themselves and their current work group, which was defined as their immediate co-workers. The total sample was characterized as follows: 57% of respondents were men, 95% were white, 3% black and 2% other races, and 29% of respondents were union members. The average age was 38.7 years (SD = 10.00) with a range of 19 to 69. Average length of service was 86.83 months (SD = 86.31). Average work group size was 25.7 (SD = 90.7). In terms of education, 1.8% of respondents did not graduate from high school, 22% had graduated high school, 28% had some college, 17% had an associate’s degree, 20.9% had bachelor’s degree, 5.3% had attended graduate school, and 5% had a graduate school degree. Measures of Relevant Attitudinal Variables Established scales from a variety of sources were used to measure relevant attitudinal variables in this study and determine how well the proposed measure(s) of propensity to withhold effort fit into a network of measures representing related constructs. Employees provided self1 An analysis of the psychometric properties of responses to the mail-back questionnaires versus responses to the on-site questionnaires revealed no significant differences between the two groups.

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reports on a number of established scales, responding on a 5-point Likert-type scale and coded so that higher scores reflected a greater amount of the variable in question. Internal consistency reliabilities and sample items are reported below; two of the 13 measures had questionable coefficient alphas. Perceived altruism was measured with five items (α = .81) that make up the altruism subscale of an organizational citizenship behavior measure (Smith, Organ & Near, 1983). A sample item was “Members of my work group volunteer for things that are not required.” Distributive justice is concerned with a perceived lack of fairness based on outcomes received by employees such as pay raises and other rewards (Lind & Tyler, 1988). It was measured using a three-item scale (α = .90) adapted from Martin and Bennett (1996). A sample item included “I am compensated fairly for the work I do here, based on the effort I give on the job.” Perceived task visibility was gauged with a five-item measure (α = .56) from George (1992). Items include “My supervisor is generally aware of when I am putting forth below average effort,” and “My supervisor usually notices when I am slacking off.” Perceived group cohesiveness was measured using an eight-item scale (α = .80) developed by Dobbins and Zaccaro (1986). Items included “The work group I belong to is a close one,” and “I feel that I am really part of my work group.” Employee job satisfaction was measured using a seven-item scale (α = .84) based on Chalykoff and Kochan (1989). Items included “I am satisfied with my job,” I am satisfied with my pay,” and “I am satisfied with my benefits.” The items in this scale include content from a variety of previously published work on general job satisfaction (cf. Cook, Hepworth, Wall, & Warr, 1980, pp. 12–74). Affective commitment to the organization was measured with a sixitem scale (α = .64) adapted from Allen and Meyer (1990). Items included “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization,” and “This organization has a great deal of personal meaning for me.” Conformance to group norms was measured with four items (α = .90) that form the pressures to conform subscale of a self-limiting behavior measure (Veiga, 1991). A sample item was “I am inclined to reduce my efforts to influence or contribute to the performance of a group’s task when I fear retaliation by group members.” Linking levels of effort to job performance was measured using the effort-performance expectancy subscale of a work-related expectancies measure (Sims, Szilagyi & McKemey, 1976). The effort-performance subscale consists of nine items (α = .80). Items included “Working as hard as I can leads to high quality work” and “Doing things as well as I am capable leads to a high quantity of work.” Employees responded to these


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items on a 5-point scale with 1 being “definitely not true” and 5 being “definitely true.” Role ambiguity was measured using six items developed by Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman (1970). Employees were asked to respond to the items using a 5-point scale with 1 being “very false” and 5 being “very true.” Items included “I feel certain about how much authority I have,” and “I know exactly what is expected of me.” These items were then reverse scored to form the role ambiguity measure (α = .80). Peer leadership was measured using scales developed by Taylor and Bowers (1972) with three items tapping peer leadership in terms of support (α = .79), two items relating to goal emphasis (α = .72), three related to work facilitation (α = .84), and three related to interaction facilitation (α = .86). Employees were asked to respond to each of the items using a 5-point scale with 1 being “to a very little extent” and 5 being “to a very great extent.” A sample item related to support was “To what extent are persons in your work group willing to listen to your problems?” A sample item related to goal emphasis was “To what extent do persons in your work group maintain high standards of performance?” An item related to work facilitation was “To what extent do persons in your work group help you find ways to do a better job?” An item related to interaction facilitation was “How much do persons in your work group emphasize a team goal?”

RESULTS Factor Analyses of Withholding Effort Items The 24 items were submitted to an exploratory factor analysis with principal factors extraction and an oblique (promax; k = 4) rotation. Ones in the diagonal of the analyzed correlation matrix were replaced with squared multiple correlations for the purposes of this analysis. We used an eigenvalue-greater-than-one criterion for retaining factors (Kaiser, 1958). Six factors evidenced eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (5.38, 1.76, 1.67, 1.40, 1.21, and 1.02, respectively). We used a minimum criterion of .40 in the rotated factor pattern matrix to infer a practically significant relationship between a factor and an item. Factor analysts (cf. Comrey, 1973) typically consider a range between .30 to .40 to be a minimum criterion for retaining items. Each factor evidenced at least two items that possessed pattern coefficients greater than .40. Eight items did not load on any of the six factors at .40 or above. Thus, we extracted seven and eight factors to examine whether additional items would load on these factors. Only one item loaded into the seventh factor and only one item loaded into the eighth factor; we

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Table 1 Factor Pattern Loadings for Initial Multidimensional Factor Analysis with Oblique Rotation of Withholding Effort Items Factor Loadings Item # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Factor 4

Factor 5

Factor 6

.58 .52 .77 .42 .52 −.01 −.02 .02 .02 −.06 .05 .18 −.02 −.09 .08 .06 .15 .20 .39 −.08 .32 .18 .17 .32

.01 .06 −.02 .16 .03 .79 .72 .00 .00 .07 .04 .01 .10 .09 .04 .02 .13 .14 −.04 −.10 .05 .02 −.05 −.03

.04 .01 −.06 .07 .12 −.04 .03 .75 .86 .08 .09 .03 .06 .02 −.05 .05 .09 −.02 .02 .01 .00 −.04 −.07 .15

.10 .02 −.01 −.06 .04 .00 −.03 .12 −.06 .54 .44 .75 −.02 −.01 .12 .03 .25 .23 .00 .31 .09 .06 .02 −.05

.01 .05 .02 .21 .07 .02 .04 .02 .00 −.02 .06 −.05 .62 .58 −.05 .06 .29 −.06 .17 .24 −.03 .32 .30 −.08

.07 .06 .12 .05 .04 .02 .02 .00 −.04 .22 .21 −.03 .06 .00 .57 .70 −.11 .11 .11 .11 −.08 −.07 .07 .06

Note. Loadings above .40 are in bold. Factor 1 = Job Neglect. Factor 2 = Free Riding A. Factor 3 = Tardiness. Factor 4 = Social Loafing. Factor 5 = Free Riding B. Factor 6 = Shirking.

therefore felt comfortable that we had extracted the maximum number of interpretable factors with our six-factor (16 item) solution. The factor pattern loadings for this solution can be found in Table 1.2 The first factor (see items 1 to 5 in the appendix) appeared to be a job neglect factor with items asking about such behaviors as taking breaks, daydreaming, pretending to be busy, failing to report trouble, and leaving extra work for others. The second factor (see items 6 and 7 2 Results were not substantively different when various other forms of oblique rotations were employed (e.g., promax with k = 2; oblimin with δ = 0 or −2).


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in the appendix) appeared to be a free riding factor with items asking about leaving chewing gum in the water fountain and not reporting toilet paper running out in the restroom. The third factor (see items 8 and 9 in the appendix) appeared to be a tardiness factor with items asking about being late for work. The fourth factor (see items 10 to 12) appeared to be a social loafing factor with items asking about not working hard in group settings. The fifth factor (see items 13 and 14 in the appendix) appeared to be another free riding factor with items asking about not attending to office visitors and not picking up trash in the work area. The sixth factor (see items 15 and 16 in the appendix) appeared to be a shirking factor with items asking about not providing full job effort. We then applied a six-correlated factors, simple structure confirmatory factor analytic model to the 16 items identified in the exploratory factor analysis. The overall fit of the model to the data was determined by several fit indexes: the goodness-of-fit index (GFI; Tanaka & Huba, 1985), the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1990), the chi-square goodness-of-fit test (Jo¨reskog, 1977), the χ2 / df ratio (Jo¨reskog & So¨rbom, 1989, pp. 43–44), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; Browne & Cudeck, 1989). The GFI and CFI range from 0 to 1, with values closer to 1 demonstrating a better fit and values above .90 generally recognized as the minimal level at which one may infer a good model fit; recently, the criterion has been raised to .95 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). Nonsignificant chi-square values usually indicate a good fit of the model to the data. However, because the chi-square test is sensitive to sample size, chi-square values must be assessed in relation to their degrees of freedom, with a χ2 / df ≤ 3 generally recognized as indicating a good fit of the model to the data. The RMSEA index assumes an unacceptable fit at values close to .10, a reasonable fit at .06–.08, and a close fit at .05 and less (Browne & Cudeck, 1989). Although the chi-square fit index was significant [χ2(89) = 235.12, p < .001], the χ2 / df ratio was 2.64. However, the GFI was .96, the CFI was .95, and the RMSEA was .05; the values of these indexes suggest a close fit of the model to the data. The estimated factor intercorrelations, factor loadings, and error variances are displayed in Figure 1. All of the estimates were significant at the p < .05 level, with the exception of the error variance estimate for item 8. All of the factor loadings were well above .40. All six of the factors were correlated with each other to varying degrees; for example the intercorrelation between job neglect and shirking was .57, the intercorrelation between the two free riding factors was .39, the intercorrelation between job neglect and tardiness was .70, and the intercorrelation between social loafing and shirking was .36. The results indicate that whereas distinct factors can be identified, the underlying constructs are highly related to one another in most instances.

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Figure 1 Maximum Likelihood-Based Standardized Loadings, Factor Intercorrelations, and Error Variances for the Confirmatory Factor Analytic Six-Factor Withholding Effort Model

Reliability Analyses of Withholding Effort Scales Most of the previously identified withholding effort scales evidenced acceptable reliability, especially considering the small numbers of items in each scale: job neglect (α = .77), free riding A (α = .71), tardiness (α = .80), social loafing (α = .73), free riding B (α = .58), and shirking (α = .67). Free riding B was the only scale that clearly evidenced marginal reliability even given the small number of items that it contained. We then examined the reliability of the composite of all six scales using the “reli-


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ability formula for linear combinations” (see Nunnally, 1967, pp. 226– 235). The composite reliability for the six scales was .85.

Correlational Analyses of Withholding Effort Scales with Established Attitudinal Scales Correlations among established measures and the proposed scales were obtained to test the hypotheses discussed earlier. Table 2 shows the correlation matrix of all of the variables and the results of the hypothesis tests across the composite withholding effort scale and its six subscales. In summary, hypothesis 1 (altruism), hypothesis 4 (cohesiveness), hypothesis 6 (organizational commitment), hypothesis 7 (conformance to norms), and hypothesis 8 (effort-performance expectancy) are supported across six of the seven proposed effort scales, and hypothesis 9 (role ambiguity) is supported across all seven scales. Hypothesis 3 (task visibility) and hypothesis 5 (job satisfaction) are supported on four of seven proposed scales, and hypothesis 2 (distributive justice) is supported in only one of the seven scales. Regarding hypothesis 10a–10d, the hypothesized relationship of goal emphasis and interaction facilitation aspects of peer leadership to withholding effort (WE) was supported in six of seven scales, the relationship of work facilitation to WE was supported in all seven scales and the relationship of peer leadership support to WE was supported in five of seven scales. Considered from the perspective of the dependent variables, the composite scale and the shirking scale were supported in 12 of 13 hypothesis tests, and the social loafing scale was supported in 11 of 13 tests. The first free riding scale (A) was supported in 8 of 13 hypothesis tests and the second free riding scale (B) was supported in 10 of 13 hypothesis tests. The tardiness scale was supported in only five of 13 hypothesis tests. These results generally confirm the criterion-related validity of all of the WE scales, other than the tardiness subscale. Finally, the correlational analysis provided evidence for convergent validity among the proposed scales. The six subscales were generally positively correlated to varying degrees; for example, shirking and social loafing were correlated at .51, shirking and tardiness at .16, shirking and free riding scale B at .18, shirking and job neglect at .40, social loafing and job neglect at .46, and social loafing and free riding scale A at .20. An analysis of the manufacturing and service subsamples indicated support for several of the hypotheses; however, the degree of support was stronger in the service sector subsample, and relatively weak in the manufacturing subsample. This was true for all of the dependent variables, with hypotheses regarding the social loafing scale particularly

1.66 1.55 2.09 1.40 1.56 1.59 1.97 3.44 2.37 3.60 3.44 2.11 3.04 4.00 3.24 3.33 3.07 3.25 3.69 3.37

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

0.47 0.56 1.16 0.67 0.61 0.94 0.89 0.87 0.83 0.84 0.86 0.94 1.13 0.80 0.89 0.97 0.91 0.85 0.74 0.80

SD

.79 .57 .46 .55 .69 .62 −.28 .35 −.20 −.25 .31 −.08 −.25 −.27 −.26 −.20 −.26 −.20 −.14

1

.28 .31 .27 .46 .40 −.23 .28 −.18 −.20 .29 −.09 −.26 −.23 −.17 −.21 −.23 −.14 −.12

2

.14 .26 .20 .09 −.11 .17 −.08 −.14 .15 .00 −.16 −.14 −.15 −.03 −.14 −.05 −.03

3

.08 .27 .16 −.05 .15 −.10 −.09 .20 .07 −.10 −.11 −.07 .03 −.06 −.08 −.02

4

.22 .18 −.17 .18 −.12 −.14 .08 −.16 −.08 −.16 −.20 −.20 −.18 −.19 −.03

5

.51 −.19 .29 −.10 −.12 .22 .03 −.15 −.12 −.14 −.09 −.12 −.12 −.10

6

−.25 .24 −.16 −.21 .17 −.08 −.13 −.18 −.20 −.19 −.22 −.16 −.23

7

−.35 .61 .64 −.16 .38 .17 .62 .64 .52 .45 .60 .34

8

−.35 −.34 .23 −.18 −.30 −.44 −.34 −.36 −.28 −.40 −.32

9

.61 −.22 .24 .14 .58 .66 .45 .56 .64 .42

10

−.16 .28 .13 .71 .72 .49 .43 .70 .35

11

.06 −.13 −.19 −.17 −.08 −.13 −.18 −.12

12

.11 .31 .29 .63 .33 .23 .24

13

.19 .14 .15 .13 .07 .15

14

.76 .45 .39 .64 .34

15

.48 .48 .67 .35

16

.53 .44 .29

17

.39 .42

18

.27

19

Note. Correlations greater than *.10* are significant at the .05 level. Correlations greater than *.13* are significant at the .01 level. Legend: 1. Composite withholding effort; 2. Job neglect; 3. Free riding A; 4. Tardiness; 5. Free riding B; 6. Social loafing; 7. Shirking; 8. Altruism; 9. Role ambiguity; 10. Group cohesiveness; 11. Goal emphasis; 12. Conformity to norms; 13. Distributive justice; 14. Effort-performance expectancy; 15. Work facilitation; 16. Interaction facilitation; 17. Job satisfaction; 18. Organizational commitment; 19. Peer leadership support; 20. Perceived task visibility.

M

Var

Table 2 Correlation Matrix

554 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS AND PSYCHOLOGY


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weak in the manufacturing subsample. This finding and other results are addressed in the next section.

DISCUSSION This study has produced parsimonious measures to tap self-reports of withholding effort (shirking/neglect) and social loafing through questionnaires in field study research, and provides support for the identification of withholding effort as a multidimensional phenomenon. Evidence of convergent, discriminant and criterion-related validity for the proposed scales was obtained. The results regarding the proposed free riding measures indicate that further work is needed to develop measures of free riding that more comprehensively tap the dimension of interest. The results indicated that the dimensions of withholding effort are differentially related to relevant antecedent variables, and that the dimensions obtained were generally, but not in all cases, as previous theory would predict. The differences indicated between withholding effort and social loafing confirm the focus of previous research, with shirking related to individual effort, neglect a matter of job withdrawal and social loafing focusing on individual effort within a group setting. However, many of the same antecedent variables relate to the occurrence of shirking, neglect and social loafing to varying degrees: low levels of perceived altruism (organizational citizenship), group cohesiveness, task visibility and perceived linkage between effort and performance, high degrees of role ambiguity and conformance to norms, and low levels of peer leadership in terms of interaction, work facilitation and goal emphasis. The free riding measures encompass the level to which respondents contribute to a clean workplace and to a safe workplace, which are both characteristic of public goods; they benefit all but do not accrue special benefits to certain individuals. However, an acceptable measure related to the other elements of public goods and a failure to contribute effort to the provision of those goods did not result from this study. The free riding measures that were produced appear sound as relationships to proposed antecedent variables indicate, but the entire content domain of free riding is not represented by these measures, and should be the subject of future research. The tardiness measure was positively related to the other measures of withholding effort. However, there was less support for its relationship to antecedent variables such as altruism, cohesiveness and organizational commitment. These results appear to indicate that tardiness is a form of holding back effort on the job and those who hold back effort or free ride may come in late as well. However, the determinants of tardi-

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ness appear not to stem from the same contextual elements as withholding effort on the job. In other words, people may be holding back effort by coming in late but the reasons for lateness do not relate as well to the factors that lead to withholding job effort. Tardiness did have a positive relationship to conformance to norms and role ambiguity, and in a secondary analysis of the data was negatively related to the employee’s age and length of service with the organization. Evidence of discriminant validity for the scales produced in this study was indicated by the fact that different withholding effort factors were differentially related to relevant attitudinal constructs as previously discussed. Convergent validity can be operationalized by the fact that in most cases the withholding effort scales were related to the different attitudinal measures in a manner that theory would predict, for example, the significant negative relationship between perceived altruism (a subset of an organizational citizenship behavior scale) and five of the six withholding effort subscales. Results of this study indicate that the measures of shirking, neglect and social loafing can be important to future field research into the topic. The free riding and tardiness findings indicate that additional theoretical and empirical work should be attempted to determine relationships of lateness to contextual factors and to further explore dimensions of free riding. This study relies on self-report measures of the dependent and independent variables, and this often creates concern in terms of common method variance and self-serving bias on the part of respondents. Future research should attempt to replicate these findings by obtaining measures of the independent variables from additional sources. However, self-reports are an appropriate means by which to build measures, particularly when other sources, such as supervisors and peers, may not be able to provide the necessary information (e.g., Carson & Bedeian, 1994). The focal point of interest is how individuals perceive work context, social expectations and norms, and how those perceptions relate to behavioral intentions (cf. Averill, 1983, p. 1154–1155). Differential contexts for survey administration and completion, present in this study, also address potential problems related to common method variance (Mitchell, 1985). An additional shortcoming of this study is its use of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on basically the same data. Splitting the data into validation and cross-validation subsamples would not have been an optimal procedure in this case due to our sample size. In addition, future work in this area would benefit from a further exploration of dimensionality issues by using a larger pool of items, particularly in relation to the free riding measures. Most of the identified factors in this study had very few items associated with them even though in


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most cases the scales captured the content domain of the proposed construct. Additional work needs to be done on a social loafing measure that would be more relevant to the manufacturing sector. The measure that resulted from this study did not correlate as well as expected with the antecedent variables in the manufacturing subsample. This result may be due to the fact that several social loafing items dealt with the relationship to customers. Most of the respondents in this study did not have contact with external customers and had not been trained in the concept of internal customers. Using the social loafing measure in a manufacturing setting that stresses service to internal customers should be pursued in future research. The measures produced in this study have practical uses for organizations. In combination with other diagnostic tools, they can help determine relative readiness of each group member for increased levels of responsibility and accountability as organizations continue to establish work teams as their basic building blocks for success. Despite issues regarding the self-report nature of the measures, a general sense of the level of job neglect, shirking and social loafing within groups and organizations can be obtained and compared to the perceptions of management. Relationships among antecedent variables and withholding effort dimensions indicate that organizations seeking to lessen withholding effort could focus on boosting perceived altruism, peer leadership, and job satisfaction as well as strengthening the linkages between provision of effort and successful job performance. In conclusion, this study addressed a problem with field research into the topic of withholding effort in work groups by producing measures of shirking, job neglect, tardiness, social loafing and to a lesser degree, free riding, that can be used in organizational survey research. An important next step is to replicate the findings in this study with an independent sample. Such a replication will show the generalizability of the measure to other samples and settings.

APPENDIX Withholding Effort Items 1. 2. 3. 4.

I take more and longer breaks than I should. (job neglect) While at work, I daydream. (social loafing—inattention) At work, I pretend to be busy. (social loafing—inattention) While at work, I fail to report trouble. (social loafing—carelessness)

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5. While at work, I leave extra work for others. (social loafing— carelessness) 6. If someone leaves chewing gum in the water fountain at work, I probably would not report it to the cleaning people. (free riding) 7. If the toilet paper runs out in the restroom at work, I probably would not report it to maintenance. (free riding) 8. I show up late for work even when I could make it in on time. (job neglect) 9. I come to work late. (social loafing—withdrawal) 10. I put forth less effort on the job when others are around to do the work. (social loafing) 11. I give less effort than other members of the work group. (social loafing) 12. I take it easy if others are around to do the work. (social loafing) 13. If visitors came into our work area looking for another department’s office, I probably wouldn’t approach the visitors to help them find who they are seeking. (free riding) 14. If I saw a piece of paper on the floor at work, I probably wouldn’t pick it up and throw it in the trash. (free riding) 15. I give less than 100 percent effort on my job. (shirking) 16. I expect to give less than 100 percent effort in the future. (shirking) 17. If others can get the job done without my help, I let them go ahead and do it even though all of us might share the benefits. (free riding) 18. I put in less effort in my work than I know I can. (job neglect) 19. I deliberately avoid my boss. (job neglect) 20. I do not do my share of the group’s work. (social loafing) 21. I often take office supplies such as paper clips and pens with me to use at home. (free riding) 22. Keeping costs down at my company is not a major concern of mine. (free riding) 23. My work group’s reputation in the organization is of little concern to me. (free riding) 24. I call in sick even when I am not sick. (job neglect) Note. A priori construct specifications are in parentheses. Item numbers match those in Table 1. REFERENCES Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchanges. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology: Vol. 2 (pp. 267–300). New York: Academic Press.


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