Meta-Synthesis of Antecedents of Social Loafing in Organizations

Today, human resources are recognized as the most important and valuable resource in the success of organizations, so that organizations make extensive efforts to improve the conditions of employees, improve their performance, and increase their motivation. In this path, there are obstacles that prevent the desired productivity from being achieved. Social loafing is one of the things that directly leads to a decrease in the performance and productivity of employees, especially in a group environment. Social loafing has many negative consequences for organizations and directly affects organizational performance. Considering the prevalence of the loafing phenomenon in organizations on the one hand and the lack of comprehensive studies regarding the antecedents of the said phenomenon, this research decided to examine this issue with a meta-synthesis method. In this regard, out of 93 articles with related content, 31 articles were qualitative in terms of research method, which were the basis of analysis. The Kappa coefficient was used to evaluate the reliability of the findings, and the Holstein, P-Scott, and Kerpinderoff's alpha coefficients were used to evaluate the reliability, transferability, confirmability. The obtained coefficients for these criteria are 0.711, 0.834, 0.770 and 0.860, respectively, which means confirming the above criteria. As a result of this analysis, 38 codes, 14 themes and 6 categories of factors were identified, which in order of importance were: managerial, occupational, environmental, personal, structural and technological.