{"id":24,"date":"2011-06-23T19:26:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T02:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/?p=24"},"modified":"2011-06-23T19:26:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T02:26:59","slug":"a-bad-apple-at-work-spoils-it-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/blog\/2011\/06\/a-bad-apple-at-work-spoils-it-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"A bad apple at work spoils it for all&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/files\/2011\/06\/lazy-worker.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-25\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/files\/2011\/06\/lazy-worker.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"70\" height=\"70\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong> New research from the  Australian School of Business indicates that just having one person who  is lazy at work can drag down a high performing\u00a0 team. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Walker, a PhD student at the Australian School of Business,  is studying the impact of a single \u201cdifficult personality\u201d member on  team effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>He says \u201call the research indicates that a single lazy person drags  the team down, reducing its performance and hence the satisfaction of  the other members of the group. It can be someone who isn\u2019t proactive,  someone who only does the minimum amount of work, or someone who is just  plain disinterested in the job at hand. Even being excessively keen but  producing little is generally a negative trait within a group.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was previously thought that the average level of a personality  trait &#8211; such as conscientiousness in a team defined its success. However  conscientiousness has two sides to it: one is discipline and a need for  achievement and the other is being painstaking and careful,\u201d according  to Benjamin Walker.<\/p>\n<p>However he adds that \u201cthe person who contributes the least has a huge  impact. Even if the rest of the team is generally pulling their weight,  they won&#8217;t be able to compensate for that member and they won&#8217;t be  happy about it. It really does show that one bad apple in the barrel can  spoil it for everyone else.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The study involved 158 students, divided into 33 teams, and examined  how the dedication and hard work of individual team members affected the  work of the entire group, concentrating on how just one member can  influence the group.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Walker will present the research at the ninth biennial  Industrial and Organisational Psychology Conference, organised by the  Australian Psychological Society, which is being held in Brisbane from  Thursday 23rd June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research from the Australian School of Business indicates that just having one person who is lazy at work can drag down a high performing\u00a0 team. Benjamin Walker, a PhD student at the Australian School of Business, is studying the impact of a single \u201cdifficult personality\u201d member on team effectiveness. He says \u201call the research [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/28"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}