SOSYAL KAYTARMA DAVRANIŞI İLE ALGILANAN GÖREV GÖRÜNÜRLÜĞÜ ARASINDAKİ İLİŞKİNİN İNCELENMESİNE YÖNELİK BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Çalışmada yöneticilerin, çalışanlarının sosyal kaytarma davranışı gösterip göstermediklerine yönelik algıları ile çalışanların, kendi görevlerinin görünürlüklerine yönelik algıları arasındaki ilişki araştırılmıştır. Ayrıca sosyal kaytarma davranışının ve görev görünürlüğü algısının demografik değişkenlere göre farklılık gösterip göstermediği de incelenmiştir. Araştırmaya satış ve pazarlama alanında çalışan (yönetici ve satış temsilcisi) 180 kişi katılmıştır. Veriler SPSS 18.0 programında analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda, sosyal kaytarma davranışı ile algılanan görev görünürlüğü arasında ilişki bulunamamıştır. Demografik değişkenler olarak incelenen cinsiyet, yaş ve kıdeme göre, görev görünürlüğü ve sosyal kaytarma davranışına yönelik algılamalarda farklılıklar saptanmıştır.

A RESEARCH ABOUT INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL LOAFING BEHAVIOR AND THE PERCEPTION OF TASK VISIBILITY

It would be easier to define employees’ contribution to their organization as long as they perform their individual work, in other words, their activities in organizations, since an employee who works individually and does a little amount of work or none will not produce anything and such an employee will be defined and disciplined through various ways. It is more difficult to define the individual contribution of team members when a performance is carried out by a group in which the group members carry out their duties in the group, not individually. In such cases some employees would show social loafing behavior (Wright and Noe, 1996: 586). Employees would have the tendency to make efforts if they work individually, not a member of a group (Johns, 1996: 254). For that reason, the importance of social loafing behavior has increased nowadays when group and team work has become common. Not only should organizations know the reasons for social loafing behavior, but also they should take steps to eradicate these reasons. Task visibility has been defined as one of the factors of social loafing behavior. Task visibility is defined as the belief of a person on how much the manager is aware of his/her effort on work (George, 1992: 192). In this study, the relationship between perceptions of managers about social loafing behaviors of their employees and the perceptions of employees about their task visibility has been investigated. Social loafing is defined as the aptitude of effort reduction of an individual in a group (Latane et al., 1979: 823; Kidwell Jr. and Robie, 2003: 540). In other words; social loafing describes the aptitude of a person to be less productive when working in a group (Harcum and Badura, 1990: 629). The main reason for observing this behavior in a group can be seen as the decrease of social awareness in a group situation. Employees usually show social loafing behavior for some reasons such as; thinking that their effort will not be evaluated in the group, thinking that individual outputs can not be measured, thinking that their efforts will not be important and assuming that their work can be done by other employees sıralanabilir (Hitt et al., 2009: 383-384; Moorhead and Griffin, 2010: 235; McShane and Von Glinow, 2010: 238; Robbins and Coulter, 2009: 255; Karau and Williams, 1997: 156; Earley, 1989: 565-566; Plaks and Higgins, 2000: 962). Task visibility is defined as the belief of a person on how much the manager is aware of his/her effort on work (George, 1992: 192; Liden et al., 2004: 288; Kidwell Jr. and Bennett, 1993). When the task visibility is low, employees can think that their managers do not realize their effort. In this situation, it is possible to see social loafing behavior (George, 1992: 192). Because when employees show social loafing behavior, they may believe that this behavior will not be realized by anyone. The level of visibility for any task depends on the environmental factors for the job, the observation and evaluation level for performance of the employee. For this reason, when individuals work alone and the outputs of their work can be measured, task visibility will be high (Jones, 1984: 686). The failure in evaluating the effort or contribution made by an individual working in a group would be one of the reasons of social loafing behavior. That's to say, task visibility is a determining factor of social loafing behavior. When his/her task is not seen by his/her manager, he/she would show social loafing behavior. Thereby, social loafing behavior can be eradicated on the condition that an individual working in a group thinks that his/her contribution is seen or measured and this contribution is appraisable (George, 1995: 327; Murphy et al., 2003:71). The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between social loafing behavior and task visibility of employees working in service and production sectors in sales and marketing branches. The relationship between perceptions of managers about social loafing behaviors of their employees and the perceptions of employees about their task visibility has been investigated. Also another aim of the study is to determine if the perception of social loafing behavior and task visibility show difference or not. We think that the results of this study will help the managers in order to reduce or prevent the social loafing behaviors of employees. Results of the study are important because the managers can realize the behaviors that can reduce efficiency. There is a lack of study in the related literature which investigates production and service sector employees in our country so this research gains more importance. The sample of the research consists of the employees who are working in production and service sectors in sales and marketing departments of the organizations in Istanbul. The method of the sampling is “convenience sampling”. Totally 180 people including 101 sales and marketing employees and 79 managers participated to the research. The questionnaire which was developed by Jennifer M. George (1992) about social loafing behavior and perceived task visibility has been used in the study. As the hypothesis of the research, no relationship is found between social loafing behavior and task visibility. The social loafing perception of male managers is found higher than female managers. The task visibility perceptions of male and female employees are found very close to each other so there is no statistical difference between these factors. Also it is found in the research that younger managers can realize social loafing behavior more than lower aged managers. The task visibility perceptions of emplayees also show difference depending on the age variable. The employees who are above 36 age perceive task visibility more than lower aged employees. No relationship is found between social loafing behavior and task visibility depending on seniority. The results of the study reveal that sale and marketing managers and employees do not perceive social loafing behavior and task visibility a lot. As a result of the study, it is possible to say that it will be suitable to design HR systems that can help to realize social loafing behavior in work environment and these systems will help to increase organizational effectiveness and individual work satisfaction. It is not possible to generalize the results of this study for all sales and marketing employees. Because of this reason, this kind of empirical studies should be done for larger samples in the future.
Sosyal Ekonomik Araştırmalar Dergisi-Cover
  • ISSN: 2148-3043
  • Yayın Aralığı: Yılda 2 Sayı
  • Başlangıç: 2000
  • Yayıncı: Selçuk Üniversitesi