Recently, workers have not remained in the same office over the long term. As the number of workers changing employment increases, changes in working patterns have resulted. Generally, individual productivity decreases as the number of employee group...
Recently, workers have not remained in the same office over the long term. As the number of workers changing employment increases, changes in working patterns have resulted. Generally, individual productivity decreases as the number of employee groups increases. Such a phenomenon was termed ""social loafing"" or the ""bystander effect"" by Latane, and ""group polarization"" by Stonar [1]. Moreover, it is clear that in a group situation, the amount of work a person completes is lower than in an individual worker situation, as described in ""the tug-of-war experiment"" by Ringelman [1].
Previous studies have chiefly focused on the number of people in work groups. In the present study, the relationship between the degree of task complexity and the employee head count in determining worker efficiency. An assembly task was completed in four stages using marketed blocks (LEGO). Each subject was given 100 blocks with which to work.
An increase in the personnel involved in completing a task, increases competition among workers, improving efficiency (reducing time needed to complete the task). The National Air and Space Administration Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) concept has demonstrated that a four-person team can complete tasks with higher adaptive weighted workload (AWWL) rating than either a two-person team or an individual worker. In the present experiment, the four-person team was the most efficient at completing the tasks at all four complexity stages.