Dark traits, social loafing and team member exchange: who slacks and when?

Aric J. Wilhau

Management Research Review, 2021, vol. 44, issue 12, 1583-1598

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to examine the workplace team member self-reported social loafing (SL) in relation to the dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. The moderating effect of team member exchange (TMX), a social contextual factor, on each proposed dark trait-SL relationship was also examined. A person X situation interactionist perspective was adopted. Design/methodology/approach - American employees were recruited to complete surveys consisting of previously published, validated and reliable scales. Correlations and hierarchical regressions were used to test the study hypotheses. Findings - As hypothesized, all positive dark trait-SL relationships were supported. TMX moderated the Machiavellianism-SL and psychopathy-SL relationships, as hypothesized. Unexpectedly, TMX was not found to moderate the narcissism-SL relationship. Originality/value - Findings imply increased managerial monitoring costs when supervising employees with elevated levels of dark traits. This is especially so when workers are assigned to team tasks and SL is a concern. To alleviate loafing tendencies, the nurturing of high-quality TMX relations among employees with elevated levels of traits Machiavellianism and psychopathy likely moderates the positive Machiavellianism- and psychopathy-SL relations. The emerging SL literature that accounts for both personality and situation, the dark trait-deviant workplace behavior literature stream and research evidencing the ability of TMX to remedy problematic characteristic behaviors are all extended by the present research.

Keywords: Motivation; Team member exchange; Dark triad; Social loafing; Workplace team (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:mrrpps:mrr-10-2020-0624

DOI: 10.1108/MRR-10-2020-0624

Access Statistics for this article

Management Research Review is currently edited by Dr Jay Janney and Prof Lerong He

More articles in Management Research Review from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().