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Who does the Social Loafing?

Personality Traits, Felt Accountability and Political Skills: Mediation and

Moderation Effects on Social Loafing

Master Thesis, MSc, Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

June 16, 2019 Douwe Klaassen Student number: 2925664 Mr. Ovingstraat 54 7891 BS Klazienaveen Tel: +31 6 31350342 e-mail: d.klaassen@student.rug.nl Supervisor/University dr. B. Verwaeren e-mail: b.verwaeren@rug.nl

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Who does the Social Loafing?

Personality Traits, Felt Accountability and Political Skills: Mediation and

Moderation Effects on Social Loafing

Abstract

Social loafing continues to be a major detrimental issue within current team performance, while it was found to accompany increasing productivity losses among technology-supported teams. Personality remains a salient though unspecified predictor of social loafing. Because of the strong personality effects on felt accountability, in which felt accountability is hypothesized to reduce social loafing, this study examined the role of felt accountability in explaining the relation between personality and social loafing. This indirect effect of felt accountability is expected to be moderated by someone’s level of political skills. Specifically, I hypothesized that high political skills diminishes felt accountability and subsequently increases social loafing intentions. Through applying moderated-mediation analyses on cross-sectional data from 215 employees across 98 organizations, this study sought explanations- and more accurate predictors of social loafing. Strong support was shown for a direct negative effect of higher levels of conscientiousness and a direct positive effect of neuroticism on social loafing intention. Both effects appeared to become (more) positive under low levels of political skills rather than high levels of political skills. No mediation effect of felt accountability could be established. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are provided.

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INTRODUCTION

Over the years, the phenomenon of ‘social loafing’ has been acknowledged as one of

the main disadvantages of working within teams. Predominately because of its major associated productivity losses, caused, for instance, by inhibited knowledge transfer or counterproductive work behaviour (e.g. Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979; Ilgen, 1999; Lazear & Gibbs, 2015; Meyer, Schermuly, & Kauffeld, 2016). Particularly in today’s technology-supported teams, social loafing intentions (SLI) - referred to as ‘’the tendency to decrease individual effort when working in groups’’ (Latané et al., 1979: 823) - have increased, as it is argued that the greater dehumanization of peers and a lack of social collectivism in technology-supported groups may act as a catalyst for SLI (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Given the increasing popularity and necessity among groups in organizations to collaborate through technology-supported channels (e.g. Blaskovich, 2008; Penarroja, Orengo, & Zorznoza, 2017), eliminating SLIs within groups remains essential (Suleiman & Watson, 2008; Zhang, Cheng, & Latimer, 2011). Despite the long history of research on social loafing (e.g. Latané et al., 1979), the problem remains vividly active and unresolved (e.g. O’Leary et al., 2017). Additional research is therefore required on antecedents explaining SLIs (Zhang et al., 2011; Simms & Nichols, 2014).

Traditional literature has mainly focused on examining contextual factors, such as task visibility (Liden, Wayne, Jaworski, Bennett, 2004) and team size (Alnuaimi, Robert, & Maruping, 2010), or extrinsic causes, such as low task involvement (George, 1992) and incoherent group norms (Høigaard, Säfvenbom, & Tønnessen, 2006), that facilitate SLIs to occur (Liden et al., 2004; Simms & Nichols, 2014). This study, however, will take a different stance by emphasizing social loafing predictors that are inherent in individuals and therefore relatively difficult to change in the short-term. The latter may enable practitioners and

researchers more constant predictors (Ones, Viswesvaran, & Dilchert, 2005; Dweck, 2008).

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4 personality is regarded highly indicative of need-driven behavioural intentions that can affect group performance (George, 1992; Tan & Tan, 2008). And, because current research depicting

the significance of personality in predicting social loafing (e.g. Tan & Tan, 2008; Klehe & Anderson, 2007) has remained inconclusive in explaining how personality affects SLI (Simms & Nichols, 2014). In current applications of personality models on the concept of social loafing (e.g. Tan & Tan, 2008), relationships were either measured directly on social loafing or were based solely on an outcome-orientation (e.g. performance) rather than a process-orientation towards working in groups. This view leaves much unexplained about the underlying personal psychology that depicts group behaviour, such as SLI, raising the salience around meditative explanations. As a solution, this study proposes a more extensive process-based application of personality and its effect on SLIs. In doing so, I adopt the ‘Big Five’ personality trait model, which is widely acknowledged as a valid and reliable framework for assessing personality (McCrae & Costa, 1987; Barrick & Mount, 1991).

Personality as a concept has been used frequently within research to help explain and predict a variety of organizational behaviour. Think for instance about one’s tendency to take risks (Nicholson, Soane, Fenton-O’Creevy, & Willman, 2005). Relationships like these tend to be based on behaviours that are associated with specific personality traits and that are activated within certain situations (Plutchik & Conte, 1997). As such, I attend that personality can predict SLI via the alignment of certain personality sub-traits, such as being disciplined and diligent (Costa & McCrae, 1998), with feelings of answerability towards others. This ‘felt accountability’ in return is capable of satisfying specific internal needs, such as the need for

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5 ranging from being rejected by the group to loss of autonomy. Conversely, positive consequences, such as extrinsic rewards or social gratification, accumulate with adhering to this felt accountability (Stenning, 1995; George, 1995). The degree to which individuals attribute importance to these consequences are again dependent on someone’s personality (e.g. Perrewé

& Spector, 2002). Felt accountability is therefore perceived a fundamental element of ‘all’ organizational group behaviour (Antonioni, 1994; Hall, Frink, & Buckley, 2017), and thus important to investigate in the context of social loafing (Schippers, 2014; Simms & Nichols, 2014; Hall et al., 2017). Additionally, while the diffusion of responsibility has been argued to be one of the primary causes of social loafing (Alnuaimi et al., 2010), it seems naturally salient to investigate accountability perceptions in order to disentangle the problem of social loafing.

The mediating relationship of felt accountability between SLI and personality, however, might not always be that straightforward. The extent to which someone acts in accordance to its perception of accountability is plausibly subject to one’s degree of ‘political skills’, referred to as ‘’the ability to effectively understand others at work, and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objectives’’

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6 a greater avoidance of non-preferred tasks and lower commitment to group outcomes. Hence, political skills could influence predictors of social loafing tendencies.

Through investigating the effects of personality on SLI by means of felt accountability and political skills, this paper can make several theoretical and practical contributions towards finding effective methods that reduce social loafing. First, through empirically testing a process-based and integrative model around felt accountability, political skills and personality (see Figure 1), this research can increase the prediction accuracy of individual SLIs. The latter can enable suggestions and future research directions on SLI inhibition within organizational settings. In this way, the research adds to the wider literature on social psychology in organizational behaviour. Second, this paper might offer HR practitioners supportive evidence on how team composition and job design can mitigate productivity losses, by showing which personality traits are more subject to felt accountability. In hiring or selecting members for group works, practitioners can use (among others) personality as a screening method to divert and/or predict SLIs. This again, can help effective resource allocation and increase team capabilities (Liden et al., 2004; Tan & Tan, 2008). Furthermore, understanding the interaction effects of political skills can probe practitioners to facilitate teams and their climates in a way that dysfunctional political behaviours are diminished (Gotsis & Kortezi, 2010).

THEORY

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7 Petty, 1982), one’s active work groups (Comer, 1995) and the level of reward and punishments (e.g. George, 1995). Contingencies like these acknowledge the necessity to account for situational factors in studying SLIs.

The occurrence of social loafing is generally speaking considered a process loss (Kerr & Tindale, 2004), and is likely to be prevalent when individuals think their efforts will not lead to desired outcomes (Karau & Williams, 1993). Social loafing may also reflect on other people

their effort motivations, through either initiating others to reduce their effort levels as well (Liden et al., 2004) or to stimulate social compensation for one’s lack of effort (e.g., Mulvey & Klein, 1998). Behavioural reactions like these are suggested to be predictable by personality characteristics (e.g. Kerr & Bruun, 1983; Schippers, 2014), which role I will address next.

The Direct Effect of Personality on Social Loafing

In terms of the Big Five personality trait model, the main focus of this study will be on investigating the effects of conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability. This because prior research showed these personality traits as most depictive of felt accountability in the context of social trait responses (e.g. Frink & Ferris, 1999; Royle, 2017). And, because conscientiousness (e.g. Le et al., 2011) and agreeableness (e.g. Beersma, Hollenbeck, Humphrey, & Moon, 2003) were readily found to have small, though significant, negative effects on SLI directly. Extraversion and openness to experience, however, were shown to be unrelated with either felt accountability or SLI (e.g. Le et al., 2011; Royle, 2017). By focusing on personality traits with a plausible relation to social loafing, this study aims to increase the potential of finding valid results.

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8 direct or moderation effects of personality on social loafing related issues. In work situations with frequent occurrences of deviant work behaviours, social loafing was found less likely to occur amongst high levels of conscientiousness (e.g., Le et al., 2011). Similarly, conscientiousness was found related to greater social loafing avoidance as a result of their innate greater task focus (e.g. Chen & Kanfer, 2006). Higher levels of agreeableness were noted to inhibit social loafing in case of cooperative reward structures (Beersma et al., 2003). And, Hurtz and Donovan (2000) revealed that agreeable individuals were more prone to maintain positive social interactions, which could lead them to socially compensate for others by means of increasing their individual efforts towards group outcomes. Lastly, individuals low on emotional stability were found to engage more in social loafing due to greater innate levels of obstructionism (Ülke & Bilgiç, 2011), and greater tendencies to uphold negative affectivity towards groups (Skarlicki, Folger, & Tesluk, 1999).

Despite that findings like these reported relatively small effect sizes and the main goal of this study is to explain the proposed direct relationships, I do want to check whether these direct effects from personality to social loafing will occur within this study in a similar fashion. This because checking for direct effects of personality across contexts and through differing methodologies could help provide greater empirical evidence for the prediction accuracy of personality in the field of social loafing (Stevens, 2017). In an attempt to replicate these prior findings on the relationships between personality and SLI, I propose the following hypotheses.

H1a: Conscientiousness will be negatively related to social loafing intention. H1b: Agreeableness will be negatively related to social loafing intention. H1c: Emotional stability will be negatively related to social loafing intention.

The Effect of Felt Accountability on Social loafing Intention

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9 & Tetlock, 1999; Hall et al., 2017; Royle, 2017). This is suggested to be determined by personality characteristics, because personality proposes the constellation of enduring emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal and motivational styles that explain individual differences in behaviour (McCrae & Costa, 1991). As such, I contend personality-accountability relationships to be capable of predicting SLI. In exploring this model, I will first address what kind of effect felt accountability will have on SLI. Afterwards, I will propose how this felt accountability could mediate the relationship between personality and SLI.

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10 reasons, I expect that higher levels of felt accountability will inhibit SLIs by means of a greater drive to satisfy accountability related needs that increase individual efforts.

H2: Felt accountability will be negatively related to social loafing intention.

The Mediating Effect of Felt Accountability

The relatively small effect sizes reported on the direct relationship between personality and SLI (e.g. Tan & Tan, 2008), can be indicative of missing explanatory factors between personality and SLI. By proposing a model that explains the personality-social loafing relationship via felt accountability, this study aims to resolve these current limitations.

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11 H3a: Felt accountability mediates the negative relationship between conscientiousness and social loafing intention.

Agreeable individuals are known for their cooperation intentions, supportiveness, cheerfulness, need for harmony and thoughtfulness (Barrick & Mount, 1991). They are likely to compromise, even though it may diminish their own needs. George and Brief (1992) suggested that higher levels of agreeableness are related with higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviour, by some argued as the reversed parallel of social loafing (Tan & Tan, 2008). In case of felt accountability, agreeableness was found to correlate with a greater need to answer for one’s input towards others (Royle & Hall, 2012), probably because individuals

high on agreeableness tend to be more caring and more cooperative, creating stronger expectations of one’s own effort and that of others (Hall, 2005). Moreover, agreeable

individuals tend to exert significant time in maintaining favourable (reciprocity-based) relationships with team members, and are therefore regarded likely to take upon answerability of one’s own actions to prevent relational damage (Hogan & Holland, 2003). This

accommodates with the unlikelihood of engaging in counterproductive behaviour at work, such as SLI (Tan & Tan, 2008). Hence, I expect the following:

H3b: Felt accountability mediates the negative relationship between agreeableness and social loafing intention.

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12 anxious individuals. This, however, was due to a fear from being negatively evaluated, surfacing a certain susceptibility to negative consequences. Similarly, Hall et al. (2003) acknowledged that alienation from the group can be regarded as more straining than justifying for one’s own behaviour towards the respective group. Hence, I contend that the innate

sensitivity to stress and the high exposure to insecurity, make neurotics more susceptible to accountability pressures. This susceptibility is likely to initiate additional efforts, as the negative (social) consequences of diminishing accountability in groups would be deemed as more severe.

H3c: Felt accountability mediates the negative relationship between emotional stability and social loafing intention.

The Moderating Effect of Political Skills

Researchers have explored a variety of situational factors to help explain social loafing. Examples of significant predictors are factors like task visibility (Pearce & Gregersen, 1991), group cohesiveness and task interdependence (e.g. Karau & Hart, 1998). Prior academics in the field of social loafing have focused most prominently on factors outside of the individual, such as the working climate and task characteristics. This study, however, will focus on examining a behavioural moderator that is attuned to the self, but which can be influenced by the outside environment. Someone’s level of political skills is regarded such a factor, and was readily

shown to implicitly mitigate feelings of accountability (Hochwarter et al., 2007).

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13 & Tan, 2008). The present study therefore contends that political skills can affect the relationship between felt accountability and SLI in a variety of ways.

Prior research has readily validated four dimensions of political skills: ‘Social astuteness’, ‘Interpersonal influence’, ‘Networking ability’, and ‘Apparent sincerity’ (Ferris et al., 2007). When examining political skills, however, this study will focus solely on one’s level of apparent sincerity and social astuteness. This becomes apparent within the following hypothecations.

First, individuals possessing social astuteness skills are regarded more capable of understanding social interactions and more capable of accurately interpreting their own behaviour and that of others. This contributes to a higher self-awareness (Ferris et al., 2007). The ability to identify with others, however, can also be used to exploit others in a way that it contributes to one’s own self-interest (Mintzberg, 1985; Pfeffer, 1992). Thus, even though it

may support individuals in satisfying their need for self-enhancement (either materially or socially), which is regarded one of the needs that drive people to create a greater sense of accountability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1994), high social astuteness may simultaneously account for more counterproductive work behaviour. One such forms aims at purposely reducing one’s conceived workload (e.g. making-up socially acceptable excuses to avoid doing additional work) and/or to achieve desired outcomes through misusing the capabilities of others. Issues like these are indicative of social loafing occurrences (Liden et al., 2004; Hayek, Randolph-Seng, Williams, & Ingram, 2016). Hence, I expect that higher levels of social astuteness can weaken the relation between felt accountability and SLI.

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14 gaining this approval, however, would then suggest the absence of the actual (‘sincere’) feeling of accountability (Ferris et al., 2007). This would make accountability act more as a catalyst through which people want to increase their social desirability, rather than making a contribution to the group her outcomes. As such, reductions in SLI through increases in felt accountability are less likely to occur among individuals that partake accountability initiatives based on apparent sincerity.

Finally, despite that networking abilities and interpersonal influence may have a direct effect on social loafing, for instance, because these skills enable people to control others in their environments in a way that others fulfil tasks which were originally assigned to the self (Pfeffer, 1992; Hayek et al., 2016), they are not specifically relatable to an individual’s independent perceptions of accountability (Hochwarter et al., 2007). Hence, while the research rests on the perspective of the individual itself, I was unable to propose any moderated accountability-SLI relationships by means of networking abilities and/or interpersonal influence.As such, I only expect the combination of apparent sincerity and social astuteness (conceptualized as political skills) to have an effect, which is expected to function as follows:

H4: High political skills will weaken the negative relationship between felt accountability and social loafing intention.

Given the hypothecations above, I contend the following moderated-mediation effect to occur:

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15 Personality: FIGURE 1 Conceptual Model

METHOD

Data Collection

In order to test the hypotheses at hand, a structured-online survey (see Appendix A) was conducted amongst 215 employees across 98 organizations. By relying on data from actual employees I intended to bridge theory with practice more accurately than the many studies on social loafing using undergraduate students in artificial settings. The latter, namely, has frequently revealed limitations in generalizability to organizational contexts (Simms & Nichols, 2014). Besides this, the dynamics of felt accountability and political skills are suggested to operate vastly different in actual work settings opposed to laboratory settings. For example, the inherent feeling of accountability in laboratory settings is argued to be less honest and/or too short-term (‘incidental’) (Hochwarter et al., 2007). The investigation of actual work settings are therefore preferred.

Respondents for the research were found using researcher-networks, also known as ‘convenience sampling’. Even though convenience sampling has several known limitations

(e.g. Bornstein, Jager, & Putnick, 2013), the sampling method revealed to be most appropriate

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16 for this study due to the relatively limited time and resources available to conduct this research (Blumberg, Cooper, & Schindler, 2014).

Participants and Study Design

The study targeted employees exhibiting significant tasks interdependencies, for the reason that without significant task interdependencies a feeling of accountability towards the group can be disregarded (Liden et al., 2004). No additional sample requirements were needed within the scope of the research. While the survey was conducted across individuals and organizations at one point in time, the study is regarded to be cross-sectional in nature (Rindfleisch, Malter, Ganesan, & Moorman, 2008).

The survey was distributed in Dutch, English, French and German, using back-and-forth translation. This to prevent linguistic misconceptions, and thus to enhance content validity (Blumberg et al., 2014). Anonymity was assured during and after participation, and respondents gave their informed consent before taking part in the survey. This might lower participation barriers and induce participants to complete the survey. The survey required approximately 10-15 minutes to execute. No incentives were granted for participation.

Operationalization of Measures

The survey comprised a five-point Likert scale (ranging from 1: ‘strongly disagree’ to 5: ‘strongly agree’) to measure the main concepts: Social Loafing, Felt Accountability,

Personality and Political Skills.

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17 Felt accountability. Eight-items adopted from Hochwarter, Kacmar, and Ferris (2003) were used to measure an individual’s level of felt accountability (α=.778). This scale is conceptualized to measure two types of felt accountability related perceptions, namely the perceived level of responsibility and the perceived level of dependency on others. This level of responsibility included items such as ‘’I often have to explain why I do certain things at work’’ and ‘’I am held very accountable for my actions at work’’. The level of dependency on others was measured via the following items: ‘’To a great extent, the success of my immediate work group rests on my shoulders’’, ‘’The jobs of many people at work depend on my success or failures’’ and ‘’In the grand scheme of things, my efforts at work are very important’’.

Personality Traits were measured via the NEO-FFI questionnaire as depicted by John & Srivastava (1999). Each personality trait (conscientiousness, agreeableness and emotional stability) was measured by means of five-items. An example item for conscientiousness (α=.776) is ‘’I am organized’’, for agreeableness (α=.772) ‘’I am understanding’’, and for neuroticism (α=.847) ‘’I am easily worried’’. Note that emotional stability was measured through the level of neuroticism, which is regarded to be the reversed parallel of emotional stability (e.g. Costa & McCrae, 1988).

Political Skills were measured using Treadway et al. (2004) their 18-item political skill inventory (PSI). From these 18-items I used the 3-items for apparent sincerity (α=.653), which included items such as ‘’When communicating with others, I try to be genuine in what I say and do’’ and 5-items for social astuteness (α=.526), which included items such as ‘’I always seem to instinctively know the right things to say or do to influence others’’.

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18 interdependencies necessary to asses SLIs in groups appropriately (Liden et al., 2004). Task interdependence was measured using 4-items adopted from Pearce and Gregersen (1991) (α=.612), including items such as ‘’I frequently must coordinate my efforts with others’’. In addition to these control variables, the study controlled for self-serving behaviour. This because the presence of a self-serving orientation could account for a ‘egoist’ or self-presentational image on one’s current work behaviour, which again might bias the reporting of SLIs

(Baumeister, 1982). Self-serving behaviour was measured using 8-items adopted from Knippenberg and Wisse (2010) (α=.671), including items such as ‘’I would use my position at work to obtain benefits for myself’’.

Validity and Reliability Measurement

The survey relied on self-reported data. A major limitation of this method is its high propensity for common method bias (Conway & Lance, 2010). I, however, perceive this method to be most appropriate in this study setting, because the constructs measured are regarded perceptual dimensions consisting of either intentions or thoughts about the perceived self, for which self-reports are the most valid source of information (Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2009).

Despite this, the study included two ‘safeguards’ in order to prevent common method bias, and to improve the validity and reliability of the measurement considerably beforehand (Conway & Lance, 2010; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2012). First, only well-validated measurement scales with previously tested construct reliabilities of α>0.700 were adopted. Second, all study variables are previously acknowledged as theoretically distinctive from other (similar) concepts, reducing the chance for conceptual overlap (e.g. Barrick & Mount, 1991; Liden et al., 2004; Hochwarter et al., 2007).

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19 the construct validity and internal reliability of the perceptual dimensions used. The results of these tests, and the actual common method bias found, are discussed within the results section.

Data Analysis Strategy

To test for the hypothesized direct relationships between personality, felt accountability, political skills and SLI, I carried out regression-based analyses. In order to measure the moderated-mediation effects I used the ‘PROCESS’ macro developed by Hayes (2015), and which relies on bootstrapping confidence intervals (e.g. Baron & Kenny, 1986). In doing so, all factor-scores were mean-centred or standardized in case of moderation (Aiken & West, 1991). This analysis method is useful for assessing several predictors at once, while simultaneously controlling for their interactions and correlations, enhancing overall accuracy (Epitropaki, 2012).

RESULTS

Reliability and Validity Analysis

The research checked for the reliability and validity of the measurement in several ways, thereby explicitly focusing on the construct validity, internal consistency and the presence of common method bias established.

First, I tested the internal reliability of each individual construct using Cronbach’s alpha. All study variables, except for social astuteness (α=.523) and apparent sincerity (α=.653), showed a Cronbach’s alpha greater than the recommended α>.700, which is indicative of

sufficiently high reliability coefficients (Cortina, 1993). Once combining social astuteness and apparent sincerity a Cronbach’s alpha of α=.614 was established. Although this Cronbach’s

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20 Second, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess construct validity levels for each variable (see Appendix B; Table B1). This analysis revealed that factor loadings ranged from low (r<0.500) to high (r>0.900). For all study variables, items that loaded lower than r=0.500 on the respective construct were omitted. Note, however, as particularly the study items of social astuteness reported low factor loadings I did not apply the same procedure to this construct. Here I used a cut-off of r=0.400, while relatively all items loaded below or near r=0.500 on their respective construct and an equivalent exploratory factor analysis did reveal factor loadings above r=0.500 of the lower loading items. Even though its state does question the reliability of social astuteness as a construct, Dawson (2017) acknowledged that despite finding low factor loadings amongst existing measurement scales, one should in case of confirmatory factor analysis maintain as many items as possible. Only when the model fit is unacceptably low one should engage in omitting variables further. This was not the case, while the following satisfactory model fit indices were found; RMSEA=0.470, CFI=0.915, TLI=0.900, CMIN/df=1.477. And, equivalent models reported lower model fit indices (Table 1). These fit indices all indicate that the model as used, after eliminating exceptionally low reliable study items at hand, is sufficiently acceptable (Hoyle & Panter, 1995; Dawson, 2017). Hence, the construct of social astuteness was regarded not to be in need of further reduction.

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21 and poor reliability for the construct social astuteness (see Appendix B; Table B1). The latter was to be expected given the discussed low factor loadings.

Third, a discriminant validity test was conducted to assess the concepts their correlations, or absence of, with respect to each other. This would help to determine the concepts their empirical distinctiveness. Discriminant validity was assessed by comparing the square root of average variance extracted with the squared correlations between factors. When the squared correlations between factors exceed that of the average variance extracted of a study variable, the study variable can be regarded to have no discriminant validity (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The discriminant validity analysis (see Appendix C; Table C1) showed that none of the study variables reported squared correlations above that of average variance extracted. Thus, discriminant validity for all study variables was established

Finally, in order to address the potential contamination of the data by means of common method bias, Harman’s single factor score method was used to test for the presence of common

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22 TABLE 1

Confirmatory Factor Analysis: Model Comparison

1-FACTOR MODEL 2-FACTOR MODEL 3- FACTOR MODEL 4- FACTOR MODEL 5- FACTOR MODEL 6- FACTOR MODEL 7-FACTOR MODEL* RMSEA .133 .130 .123 .109 .108 .083 .047 CFI .276 .315 .386 .526 .537 .729 .915 TLI .207 .248 .321 .470 .476 .688 .900 CMIN/df 4.786 4.590 4.242 3.529 3.502 2.489 1.477 df 297 296 294 291 287 282 276 Chi-square 1421.366 1358.596 1247.154 1027.000 1005.109 701.913 407.587 p .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

Notes; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker Lewis Index

(TLI). Degrees of freedom (df). Minimum discrepancy divided by degrees of freedom (CMIN/df). Acceptable model fit indices according to Dawson (2017) are as follows: RMSEA<0.600, CFI>0.800, TLI>0.800, CMIN/DF<5.000.*Represents the model as hypothesized after omitting low factor items.

Descriptive Analysis

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23 The means, standard deviations and bivariate correlations among the study variables are presented in Table 2. No sign of perfect multi-collinearity was found. Of interest within these correlations is that neuroticism (r=.240, p=.000) and conscientiousness (r=-.151, p=.026) correlate significantly with SLI, which could be indicative of a direct relationship. Also, gender seems to correlate significantly with all personality traits (neuroticism; r=.166, p=.015) (conscientiousness; r=-.190, p=.005) (agreeableness; r=.189, p=.005), one’s political skills (social astuteness; r=.185, p=.006, and apparent sincerity; r=.196, p=.004) and felt accountability (r=-.140, p=.041), justifying its role as control variable. No variables (except for the control variable task interdependence; r=.223, p=.001) seemed to correlate with felt accountability.

TABLE 2

Descriptive Analysis and Bivariate Correlations

Mean SD 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 1. Task Interdependence 3.576 .631 X 2. Gender¹ .630 .484 -.048 X 3. Age 32.450 13.304 .010 .098 X 4. Organizational Tenure 6.320 8.208 -.024 -.051 .709** X 5. Organizational Hours 2.270 1.431 -.273** .159* -.236** -.118 X 6. Self-serving Behaviour 2.030 .664 -.090 -.093 .006 -.033 -.117 X 7. Conscientiousness 3.986 .850 -.056 -.190** .172* .078 -.062 022 X 8. Agreeableness 4.214 .600 .036 .189** .025 .039 .058 .062 -.021 X 9. Neuroticism 2.466 1.023 .068 .166* -.173* -.190** .077 -.013 -.001 .056 X 10. Social Astuteness² 3.846 .640 .098 .185** .079 -.016 -.033 .165* .065 .222** .097 X 11. Apparent Sincerity² 4.469 .550 .056 .196** .180** .113 -.003 .030 .134* .405** .069 .225** X 12. Felt Accountability 3.374 .870 .223** -.140* -.085 -.025 -.159* .062 .024 -.034 .060 -.009 -.009 X 13. Social Loafing Intention 1.654 .640 -.115 -.026 .156* -.059 -.135* .092 -.151* -.095 .240** -.105 -.180** .068 X

Notes; N=215. SD=standard deviation. Correlation coefficients (r) between parentheses. † * p < .05, ** p<.01.

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24 Hypotheses Testing

Direct Effect of Personality and Felt Accountability on Social Loafing Intention

In order to analyze the direct effect of personality (H1a, H1b, H1c) and felt accountability (H2) on SLI, independent least ordinary regression analyses from personality and felt accountability on SLI were performed.

The results of the regression analysis on the relationship between personality and SLI (Table 3), R²=.141, F(9, 204)=3.727, p=.000, reveals a significant positive effect of neuroticism on SLI, ꞵ=.153, t=3.653, p=.000, a small significant negative effect of agreeableness on SLI, .127, t=-1.808, p=.072, and a significant negative effect of conscientiousness on SLI, ꞵ=-.104, t=-2.072, p=.040. Thus we can conclude that higher levels of conscientiousness tend to result in higher levels of SLI, supporting H1a, that higher levels of agreeableness tend to result in higher levels of SLI, supporting H1b, and that higher levels of emotional stability tend to result in higher levels of SLI, supporting H1c.

The regression analysis applied on the relationship between felt accountability and SLI (Table 3), R²=.063, F(7, 206)=1.974, p=.000, reveals a non-significant positive effect of felt accountability on SLI, ꞵ=.062, t=1.207, p=.229, not supporting H2. Hence, we can conclude that higher levels of felt accountability did not result in lower levels of SLI.

Mediation Effect of Felt Accountability between Personality and Social Loafing Intention

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25 significant negative predictor of SLI, ꞵ=-.126, t=-1.788, p=.075, neuroticism remained a significant positive predictor of SLI, ꞵ=.156, t=3.573, p=.000, and felt accountability remained an insignificant predictor of SLI, ꞵ=.056, t=1.129, p=.260. As such, while no significant changes occurred within these direct relationships from personality to SLI, one can conclude that there is no full mediation. Thus, it appears that the indirect effect of felt accountability does not explain a more significant relationship towards SLI than personality alone, showing no support for H3a, H3b or H3c.

Moderation of Political Skills

To check whether the relationship between felt accountability and SLI is significantly moderated (weakened) by one’s level of political skills, a moderated regression analysis (see

Aiken & West, 1991) of pollical skills on the relationship between felt accountability and SLI, was conducted (Table 4), R²=.092, F(9, 204)=2.290, p=.018. This analysis shows that political skills does not significantly interact with the relationship between felt accountability and SLI, ꞵ=-.002, t=-.051 , p=.959. As such, the non-significant relationship between felt accountability and SLI does not change under various levels of political skills, revealing no support for H4.

Moderated-Mediation Model

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26 TABLE 3

Direct Effects of Personality and Mediation Effect of Felt Accountability

Dependent Variable: SLI Dependent Variable: Felt Accountability Dependent Variable: SLI Model 1 ꞵ (SE) Model 2 ꞵ (SE) Model 3 ꞵ (SE) Model 4 ꞵ (SE) Model 5 ꞵ (SE) Model 6¹ ꞵ (SE) Intercept Control 1.939(.389)*** 2.470***(.484) 1.758***(.417) 2.918(.526)*** 2.671***(.681) 2.321***(.501) Age Gender Organizational Hours Organizational Tenure Self-serving Behaviour Task Interdependence -.010(.005)** -.014(.093) .041(.033) .007(.008) .095(.066) -.078(.071) -.007(.005) -.005(.094) .036(.032) .009(.007) .107*(.064) -.100(.069) -.009*(.005) -.004(.093) .045(.033) .007(.008) .090(.066) -.095(.073) -.011(.007) -.163(.125) -.066(.045) .008(.010) .086(.089) .276(.096)*** -.011(.007) -.199(.132) -.064(.045) .009(.010) .085(.090) .276**(.097) -.007(.005) .006(.094) .040(.032) .009(.007) .102(.064) -.115(.070) Main Effects Neuroticism Agreeableness Conscientiousness Felt Accountability¹ .153***(.042) -.127*(.070) -.104**(.050) .062(.051) .056(.059) -.026(.099) .009(.071) .156***(.042) -.126*(.070) -.108**(.050) .056(.050) Δ .029 .103 .074 .031 -.072 .064 .059 -.005 .105 .046

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27 TABLE 4

Moderation of Political Skills

Dependent Variable: SLI Model 1 ꞵ (SE) Model 2 ꞵ (SE) Model 3 ꞵ (SE) Intercept 1.939***(.389) 1.680***(.401) 1.680***(.402) Control Age Gender -.016**(.005) -.014(.093) -.008(.005) .063(.095) -.008(.005) .064(.096) Organizational Tenure Organizational Hours Self-serving Behaviour Task Interdependence .007(.008) .041(.033) .095(.066) -.078(.071) .006(.008) .045(.033) .117*(.066) -.073(.072) .006(.008) .045(.033) .117*(.067) -.073(.073) Main effects Political Skills -.225*(.048) -.123**(.049) Felt Accountability .057(.044) .057(.045) Interaction

Political Skills x Felt Accountability -.002(.043)

Δ .028 .056 .028 .052 -.004

Notes; N=215. Standard Errors (SE) between parentheses. † * p < .10, ** p< .05, *** p<.001.

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28 and emotional stability on SLI, as were established before to be significant, are not significantly mediated by felt accountability while being moderated by one’s level of political skill. In other words, when the level of political skills is high rather than low, the relationship personality→felt accountability→SLI does not change significantly in its strength. Hence, no support was found for H5a, H5b or H5c.

Moderation Effect of Political Skills on Personality

Besides the hypothesized relationships, I checked post-hoc for the interaction of political skills with the relationship between personality and SLI, excluding felt accountability.

A moderated regression analysis on the interaction of political skills on the relationship between personality and SLI (Table 7), R²=.204, F(13, 200)=3.949, p=.000, revealed the following. First, there was a significant interaction between neuroticism and political skills on SLI, ꞵ=-.207, t=-2.405, p=.015 (see Figure 2). Hence, it appeared that an increase in one’s level of neuroticism will lead to an increase in SLI and that this relation will become more positive when one’s political skills are low opposed to high. Second, a small significant interaction

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29 TABLE 5

Conditional Indirect Effects

Conditional Indirect Effects: Neuroticism as independent variable ꞵ (SE) (LLCI/ ULCI)

-1 SD (Political Skills) .004(.010) (-.004/.030)

Control (Mean) .003(.007) (-.002/.021)

+1 SD (Political Skills) .002(.008) (-.003/.023)

Conditional Indirect Effects: Conscientiousness as independent variable ꞵ (SE) (LLCI/ ULCI)

-1 SD (Political Skills) .004(.008) (-.006/.030)

Control (Mean) .005(.005) (-.002/.031)

+1 SD (Political Skills) .006(.005) (-.003/.034)

Conditional Indirect Effects: Agreeableness as independent variable ꞵ (SE) (LLCI/ ULCI)

-1 SD (Political Skills) -.002(.011) (-.045/.012)

Control (Mean) -.002(.008) (-.031/.009)

+1 SD (Political Skills) -.002(.008) (-.028/.009)

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30 TABLE 6

Moderated-Mediation

Mediator Variable: Felt Accountability Dependent Variable: SLI

Model 1 Neuroticism ꞵ (SE) Model 2 Conscientiousness ꞵ (SE) Model 3 Agreeableness ꞵ (SE) Model 4 Neuroticism ꞵ (SE) Model 5 Conscientiousness ꞵ (SE) Model 6 Agreeableness ꞵ (SE) Intercept Control -.544(.536) -.698(.574) -.356*(.665) 1.376**(.474) 2.032***(.521) 1.872**(.065) Age Gender Organizational Hours Organizational Tenure Self-serving Behaviour Task Interdependence -.010(.007) -.183(.128) -.068(.048) .009(.012) .085(.096) .268*(.096) -.011(.007) -.186(.127) -.063(.048) .009(.012) .084(.095) .282**(.095) -.011(.007) -.156(.128) -.065(.048) .008(.012) .088(.096) .278**(.095) -.006(.006) -.013(.105) .040(.040) .008(.008) .116(.071) -.090(.072) -.007(.006) .089(.109) .041(.042) .006(.009) .120*(.073) -.084(.074) -.008(.006) .069(.107) .046(.042) .007(.009) .119(.072) -.071(.075) Independent Variable Conscientiousness Agreeableness Neuroticism Felt Accountability .055(.061) .070(.072) -.011(.007) .159**(.050) .059(.050) -.096(.061) .070(.054) -.050(.090) .004(.053) Moderator Variable Political Skills -.445**(.177) -.363*(.190) -.352*(.212) Interaction

Political Skills x Felt Accountability

Mediator Variable (index of moderated-mediation) Felt Accountability -.044(.167) .002(.014) .036(.189) .003(.017) -.003(.188) .001(.019) LLCI=-.050 ULCI=.014 LLCI=-.020 ULCI=.052 LLCI=-.035 ULCI=.043 Δ .094 .095 .091 .151 .057 .107 .012 .094 .003

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31 TABLE 7

Moderation of Political Skills

Dependent Variable: SLI Model 1 ꞵ (SE) Model 2 ꞵ (SE) Model 3 ꞵ (SE) Intercept 1.939***(.389) 1.699***(.388) 1.572***(.385) Control Age Gender -.016**(.005) -.014(.093) -.006(.005) .034(.094) -.006(.005) .034(.093) Organizational Tenure Organizational Hours Self-serving Behaviour Task Interdependence .007(.008) .041(.033) .095(.066) -.078(.071) .009(.007) .034(.032) .127**(.064) -.082(.069) .008(.007) .037(.031) .131**(.063) -.059(.069) Main effects Political Skills -.113**(.050) -.122**(.263) Conscientiousness Neuroticism Agreeableness -.079*(.043) .164***(.043) -.038(.045) -.091**(.042) .184***(.043) -.036(.046) Interaction

Political Skills x Conscientiousness Political Skills x Agreeableness Political Skills x Neuroticism

.178*(.049) .122(.062) -.207**(.042) Δ .028 .119 .091 .153 .034

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32 FIGURE 2

Interaction Between Neuroticism and Political Skills Predicting Social Loafing Intention

FIGURE 3

Interaction Between Conscientiousness and Political Skills Predicting Social Loafing Intention 1 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 2 2,2

Low Neuroticism High Neuroticism

S oc ial L oaf in g In te n tion Low Political Skills High Political Skills 1 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 2 2,2

Low Conscientiousness High Conscientiousness

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33

DISCUSSION

The present study contributes to current literature in the field of social loafing by finding additional empirical evidence stating that personality, in the form of conscientiousness, emotional stability and agreeableness, is directly related to someone’s SLI. In particular, I found

that emotional stability, conscientiousness and agreeableness are all negatively related to SLI. These findings are consistent with prior research relating equivalent personality characteristics to conceptualizations of social loafing (Beersma, et al., 2003; Chen & Kanfer, 2006; Le et al., 2011; Tan & Tan, 2008; Skarlicki, et al., 1999; Ülke & Bilgiç, 2011). Herein, emotionally stable people were found least likely to engage in social loafing.

This study, however, could not find support for the explanatory power of felt accountability (the mediated chain of personality→felt accountability→SLI), which was expected to form both a theoretical and practical bridge between the studied personality traits and SLI. Even when accounting for one’s level of political skills, the explanatory power of felt accountability remained unchanged. This reveals an inconsistency to the results found by Hochwarter et al. (2007), in which political skills neutralized the positive effect of felt accountability towards several job performance indices. Interestingly enough, this study does find evidence supporting that one’s level of political skills (comprising of skills in apparent

sincerity and social astuteness) changed the actual nature of the relationship between conscientiousness and SLI, as well as for the relationship between emotional stability and SLI.

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34 alienated from the group, and/or disregarding any justification of counter productive work behaviours like social loafing (Tan & Tan, 2008). Alternatively, the common negative affectivity neurotic individuals have towards working collectively within groups could have intensified social loafing (Skarlicki et al., 1999). The specifics around the mechanisms and effects of this fear, justification or affectivity, however, remain unclear at this point (Murphy, Wayne, & Liden, 2003). In a similar vein, agreeable individuals their tendency to act more prosocial, such as being cooperative (Thomas, Moore, & Scott, 1996), could provide reason for the lower SLI reported. And, conscientious individuals their priory found greater levels of proactive employee involvement (Wanberg, Watt, & Rumsey, 1996; Lee, Kelly, & Edwards, 2004), establishment of effective work coordination (Barrick & Mount, 1991) and low levels of absenteeism (Judge et al., 1997), could explain conscientiousness leading to lower SLIs.

Even though I cannot relate the found social loafing mitigations to the construct of felt accountability, it seems likely that certain personality traits stimulate social loafing within one’s work environment. A plausible explanation, besides that of felt accountability, attunes to social interactions that have developed over time between group members and the performance-norms that come with it (e.g. Meyer et al., 2016). These explanations would require one to examine social interactions within individual cases, whilst mapping out all specific conditions at hand. Although such methodologies tend to be limited in generalizing results, they are raising in salience within the field of social loafing (e.g. Chen, 2015).

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35 instance, skills in social astuteness have been shown to result in greater self-awareness of one’s own behaviour as that of others (Ferris et al., 2007). This awareness can be used to manipulate others to engage in discretionary social compensation for the work oneself had to cover (Pfeffer, 1992). Higher levels of apparent sincerity, in turn, might have distorted just intentions to not engage in social loafing (Ferris et al., 2007).

These prior effects, however, were explored independent of personality. Hence I contend an alternative explanation for both conscientiousness and emotional stability. Conscientious individuals have greater tendencies to organize (e.g. Witt et al., 2002) and political skills tend to be more salient amongst organizing figures (e.g. managers) (DeLuca, 1999). The interaction between political skills and conscientiousness towards greater levels of social loafing, could be a result of conscientious individuals with high political skills to be predominated with the coordination of work rather than with direct (‘physical’) contributions to work outcomes or processes. This coordinative behaviour could have been perceived as leaning more towards social loafing. The absence of such intentions to control or leverage relationships, however, may have resulted in neurotics reducing their individual effort even more, by increasing their insensitivity to the negative consequences of social loafing (e.g. Hall et al., 2003). The latter explanations actually contrast the fast growing literature arguing for the positive effects of political skills, such as maximizing and leveraging effective work relationships (e.g. Braddy & Campbell, 2009). Note that these proposed (‘spurious’) explanations were established post-data and thus require further exploration.

Practical Implications

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36 First, the results found provide additional evidence supporting the use of personality characteristics in selecting and recruiting in a way that it minimizes SLIs. In particular, practitioners should focus on recruiting and/or selecting people who score higher on agreeableness and conscientiousness, but low on neuroticism. As such, the use of recruiting methods aimed at raising interest amongst certain personality groups, as well as the use of personality tests for screening, remain to be effective HR instruments in accounting for SLIs.

Second, because felt accountability perceptions did not reduce SLIs, methods aimed at stimulating responsibility feelings, such as the establishment of psychological empowerment climates (Wallace et al., 2011), are regarded to be ineffective in reducing social loafing.

Finally, practitioners should be aware of the interaction between political skills and personality once selecting or recruiting employees. As such, it would be unwise to relate highly conscientious and highly emotionally stable employees to tasks or functions that require advanced political skills, while it is likely that these people would become more prone to social loafing.

Limitations

Despite the interesting findings of this paper, it does come with several limitations. First, in testing the concept of felt accountability, the research did not account for the potential difference between examining outcome- and process-based accountability. Though this can be justified by the reason that ‘the perspective of pure process- and outcome-based accountability in field settings may be an unattainable archetype’ (Seidenfeld, 2002:1067), making it too

complex for research in real-world settings.

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37 was checked for, by means of a latent factor technique, is known to not model all potential method effects (Podsakoff et al., 2012).

Third, social loafing may not only consist of slacking off at work, but it may also include other disruptive team behaviours, such as making jokes and putting off the task at hand (Jassawalla, Sashitall, & Sashitall, 2009). The measurement scale used to assess social loafing did not incline any potential for such disruptive team behaviours.

Fourth, the research has not allowed enough room to control for task characteristics that could (not) have obstructed SLIs from occurring. For example, people being confronted with low task visibility (Kidwell & Bennett, 1993) or high task complexity (Jackson & Williams, 1985) tend to engage in more social loafing. Neither did we account for the characteristics of one’s respective organizational environment or group. For instance, people functioning in

cohesive groups could have been less likely to engage in social loafing than those who did not (Karau & Williams, 1997).

Fifth, even though I find significant interactions effects between personality and social loafing intentions, I do contend that the average levels of social loafing found in this study are relatively low. Hence, while I do find variation in how (either negative or positive) and how strong personality effects social loafing, the levels of social loafing intentions did not vary extremely. The part that social loafing remains to be a sensitive topic to address within organizations may have contributed to this given (Chen et al., 2015). The reporting of low average levels of social loafing, however, is relatively common within social loafing research (e.g. Williams, Harkins, & Latané, 1981; Tan & Tan, 2008).

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38 teams socially compensated for efforts across tasks. Although, Schippers (2014) does highlight that in many other settings (occurrences) SLIs remain to be a major cause of productivity loss.

Future Research Directions

As the results leave much unexplained about the workings of personality towards social loafing, additional research is required. Here I propose a number of future research directions. First, although this study did not differ between outcome- and process-accountability for complexity reasons, research does acknowledge the possibility for differential accountability perceptions for either outcome- and process-accountability (Hall et al., 2017). In order to see whether it is worthwhile to develop complex real-world studies investigating different types of accountability perceptions, further research could start off by doing laboratory experiments with settings that stimulate either outcome- or process-accountability feelings. For example, the development of performance-norms within groups are likely to influence SLIs more by means of outcome-accountability perceptions than by process-accountability perceptions (e.g. Høigaard, Säfvenbom, & Tønnessen, 2006).

Second, other mediating variables linking personality and social loafing tendencies can be examined besides that of felt accountability. For instance, future research can focus on how risk aversion and/or the propensity to trust others operates between personality and SLIs. Agreeableness, for example, has been associated with greater trust levels and lower social loafing tendencies (Costa & McCrae, 1988). When investigating (new) mediation relationships, it would be interesting to incline the effects of various social loafing consequences in terms of social, psychological and organizational aspects on one’s SLI as well. Performance decrements,

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39 Finally, further research could replicate this study in other settings. An interesting replication would be one that inclines the perceptions of other sources (e.g. co-workers or bosses) on people’s reported SLIs and/or accountability feelings across several instances of time. Examining the differences between self- and other-perceptions can not only enable to see the differential effect between multi- and single source data, it can simultaneously expose certain biases people might have embedded in their accountability or social loafing intentions (e.g. Ferrari, & Pychyl, 2012). A multi-source setting would also allow for examinations of interpersonal influence and network abilities under the umbrella of political skills, because it would allow to investigate extrinsic perceptions on social interactions and the individual’s possession of skills guiding these interactions (Hochwarter et al., 2007).

CONCLUSION

The goal of this study was to find an explanation to how personality relates to social loafing intentions. In doing so, the research examined the complex relationship between three personality traits (conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness), felt accountability, political skills (social astuteness and apparent sincerity) and social loafing intention. The results found illustrate the salience of accounting for one’s personality characteristics in selecting and recruiting employees as a means to reduce social loafing. Interestingly, political skills were determined to influence the effect personality has on social loafing intention. The intricacies of this interaction, however, remain to be investigated further.

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40

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