The New Professor (Scenario)
Samir has recently received his Ph.D. and has begun teaching at a large university. Prior to his first day of class, Samir's department head had lunch with him and explained what was expected of a new professor in terms of maintaining discipline in his classroom, providing students with a challenging course, and keeping grades down. Later that week Samir met with other professors in a faculty meeting. During that meeting, a number of issues were discussed and, although Samir did not agree with all of them, he did not feel comfortable discussing his position because he was a new assistant professor and the others were more senior. However, in watching the reactions of other professors, he got the feeling that some of them disagreed with a few issues, too, but did not want to say anything because doing so might be disruptive.
-Midway through his first semester, one of the teams in Samir's class came to him with a problem. Of the four team members, all of them were doing their jobs except Rami. The group had agreed to have Rami as a member since they all knew he had a high GPA and worked hard on all of his individual assignments. However, as a team member the group agreed that they were not getting Rami's best efforts. They felt like he was not working as hard as a group member as he was as an individual. Samir quickly diagnosed the problem as one of________ .

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The behavior of Rami is an example of social loafing, which occurs when an individual puts forth less effort as a member of a group than as an individual. This is a common problem in teamwork situations and can be addressed by establishing clear expectations, individual accountability, and monitoring of group performance. Role conflict refers to conflicts that arise from competing demands from different roles or positions, groupthink refers to the tendency for members of a group to conform to group norms or avoid disagreement, and status differentials refer to differences in power or prestige among group members that can affect communication and decision making. None of these concepts fit the situation with Rami and his team.