How team members control free riding in knowledge work contexts. A multidimensional scaling study

Organizations are increasingly relying on knowledge-intensive teamwork. This type of teamwork is often threatened by free riding tendencies, since individual contributions to the team outcome are difficult to specify and measure. In addition, supervisors are often not in the position to judge individual experts’ behaviors. Hence, free riding in knowledge teams cannot be overcome by formal managerial control alone. As a consequence, informal team-based control is of paramount importance to curb free riding and its detrimental effects on the teams’ motivation and performance. In this paper, we empirically develop a typology of team members’ informal control behaviors to adjust and regulate free riding of colleagues. First, a free-listing study is conducted, which identifies salient peer behaviors that are exerted in response to other team members’ free riding in a context that is typical for knowledge work. In a second study, we apply card sorting and multidimensional scaling methods to categorize these behaviors. Our findings suggest that informal team-based control of free riding differs along two dimensions: full pressure versus no pressure, and team-oriented versus self-oriented. Based on these two dimensions, our analyses reveal four distinct approaches how team members informally control free riding in knowledge work contexts: ’bring it into the light’, ‘solve it around the table’, ‘fight it behind the back’, and ‘adjust it yourself’.

Keywords:
Team-based control, informal control, peer-control, clan control, social control, self-control, teamwork, free riding, social loafing, free-listing, multidimensional scaling