Obstacles That May Cause Animosity In A Working Group

2.4.2 Free-riding

Another obstacle that may cause animosity within a working group is free-riding. Team members’ differing non-cognitive skills, such as effort, discipline, determination, or commitment to group goals, may lead to unequal job participation among team members. According to Molleman (2005), intra-team conflict is likely to occur if some team members put forth more effort while others behave as free riders. Free-riding may also result from the difference in ability and status among team members. Because high-ability workers are more likely to receive respect and recognition for leading the team than low-ability workers do (Hamilton et al., 2003), the latter might feel undervalued and have lower incentives to endeavor, decreasing

Discrimination can be generally defined as unjustifiable conduct towards someone due to distinguishing physical, biological, or cultural traits. Wrench (2002) classifies discrimination into 7 different categories, six of which can be present in multi-ethnic teams.

a) The first type of discrimination is racial or ethnic discrimination, which consists of actions by racist and prejudiced people who refuse to recruit members of a social group, who practice verbal or physical racial harassment, or who exclude members of those social groups from access to opportunities such as training or promotion (Wrench 2002). In a team context, a team manager might e.g. refrain from giving an important task to a black team member for thinking he is less capable than his white colleague.

b) The second is statistical discrimination, where a decision-maker evaluates a team member’s individual characteristics based on stereotypes of the average behavior of the minority group that that person belongs to. For instance, team members might consider a Colombian co-worker lazy based on a general preconception of Latin

It happens when people in superior working positions take advantage of people that belong to a minority ethnic group that is in a vulnerable situation in society and in the labor market. For instance, a French team manager in a French company verbally agrees to raise a Muslim team member’s pay check if he helps him with his project. But once the work is done, the manager does not honor his commitment because he assumes that the Muslim’s job perspectives in France are currently not so good due to the growing wave of anti-Islamic sentiment after the terrorist attacks in