Often times co-workers are put together as a team to complete a project. When this happens then it is very likely that some team members will 'shirk' their responsibilities and watch the others do the work. In the literature, this is especially true if they know that others make more money than them. How can management overcome this situation? Have you encountered this problem? I have. Incidentally, a graduate student in the Ph.D. program I attended wrote his dissertation along this subject. He related this topic to NBA basketball. Each player on the team is a team member. Will some slack off and others work harder? Will there be those who do not get paid as much as the stars not pass the ball to the stars and keep the ball for themselves? He did a study on the Chicago Bulls team when they had Michael Jordan and he found that the number of assists where on par with all the other teams. This went counter to what the literature says. What do you think this student's reasoning was for this? Answer this question with 4-6 paragraphs Manager has a lot of responsibilities. Not only problem-solving and designing strategies that ensure success of the business also has an important role in motivating the teamwork. The ability to motivate team and reduce moral hazard is a great challenger. As it is stated in the discussion post it is often to see how some members of the team work hard while others will free ride or “shirk”. The question is how can management overcome this situation? According to the textbook manager could monitor the teamwork and punish shirking behavior. It states that “Manager in a Capitalist economy are motivated to monitor teamwork ultimately because of their overreaching goals to maximize returns to the owner of the business that is, economic profits.” (McGuigan, pg. 8). I believe monitoring is essential to avoid free riding behaviors. But is very important to keep in mine that coworker pressure over team members that free ride could have a positive impact. There are many ways how management can overcome this situation. Management may stablish incentive through positively reinforce the hard work, like bonuses or company stock; Regular performance evaluation; and long-term benefits to motivate employee to be productive. I have encountered this problem. During my time has supervisor of a clinical laboratory in my previous job I saw this problem often between the phlebotomist technicians. The attention to the patients was delay and most of the work was on few employees, while other coworkers have the decision to free drive (shrink) on their coworkers’ efforts (hard work). We start to do monitoring; we review number of sticks per phlebotomist. Periodic evaluations to each technician were performed and numbers of sticks compared to its peers were shown, in addition to this a quartile bonus was offered for those who achieved a minimum number of sticks, established previously. In reference to the Chicago Bulls example presented by the graduate student. This case was a good teamwork due to a sense of moral duty. When we talk about sport I cannot think of “shirking”. Any team member wants to look bad or loose in front of their rival team. Team members have a special incentive, who does not want to win? The more each player play more the compensation. In this case a member of the team due to shame will not want to perform less than the team average. I believe that the peer pressure is also effective in avoiding moral hazard in this case. read above and answer in 2 paragraphs