GRADUATE RESEARCH DISSERTATIONS
CHAIR: ADRIANE RANDOLPH, PH.D. | SECOND: DOMINIC THOMAS, PH.D. | READER: AARON FRENCH, PH.D.
BUSINESS IMPACT
SCHOLARLY ABSTRACT
The 2020 COVID19 pandemic forced the world to shut down and many workers were required to implore digital technology and work remotely. Remote work became a significant form of conducting business, and the number of meetings daily increased in the beginning of the month of March 2020 from a little over half a billion meeting minutes to 2.7 billion meeting minutes by March 31, 2020. Information Systems (IS) researchers posit that the use of digital technology induced by the pandemic will be per - manently normalized. However, there are challenges that come with employing a remote workforce. Managerial teams have expressed their concern about effective col - laboration and participation. Social loafing, the tendency for team members to lower their participation, was one of their top concerns. In this work, perceived marginalization was researched as an antecedent to social loafing in rela - tion to several characteristics of virtual team members. We examined perceived marginalization and its effects on per - ceived social loafing and explored the influence of virtual team members’ sensitivity to marginalization on this rela - tionship. It extended the IS literature by reviewing another characteristic of teams, their composition, and how it can affect their effectiveness when faced with marginalization in an online environment. Further it tested the generaliz - ability of the Alnuaimi et al. (2010) study on moral disen - gagement by using the scale created in the study to research the effects of moral disengagement on social loafing.
Perceived marginalization is an antecedent to social loafing in online teams. For hybrid/remote teams using tools like MS Teams or Zoom, leaders should monitor not only task metrics but inclusion signals (who speaks, who’s interrupted, whose ideas are ignored). Reducing marginalization—especially around race, gender, age, appearance—can directly reduce disengagement and social loafing. Sensitivity to marginalization moderates how team composition translates into loafing. HR and people‑analytics teams can deploy short climate or “everyday discrimination” surveys to identify em - ployees with high marginalization sensitivity and tailor team‑building, norms, and leadership behaviors accord - ingly—particularly in global virtual teams. The study validates moral disengagement mechanisms (diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization, attribution of blame) in technology‑supported virtual teams. Digital workplace policies and collaboration norms should explicitly reinforce individual accountability and recogni - tion in group outputs (e.g., clear owners, visible contribu - tion tracking). This reduces diffusion of responsibility and helps prevent people from psychologically “checking out.”
Marginalization and its effect on Social Loafing in Online Virtual Teams
NICOLETTE GORDON, PH.D.
Keywords: Social Loafing, Virtual Teams, Global Support Systems, Marginalization, Moral Disengagement, IT Teams
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