Relationship meaningfulness and social loafing in Mexican workers

PurposeThis paper examines social loafing (SL) in Mexican workers, introducing relationship meaningfulness (RM) and revisiting the impact of expectation on co-workers (ECW) and task meaningfulness (TM) on SL.Design/methodology/approachThis research study used 697 questionnaires reporting results on descriptive statistics, correlations and the analysis of variance (ANOVA).FindingsResults indicated that ECW, RM and SL are negatively related and there is no significant relationship between TM and SL for the Mexican sample.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper links three relevant fields: SL, work meaningfulness (WM) and Latin American management and expands workplace theories of effort by adding RM and demonstrating this negatively relates to SL. Also, by showing RM may be more relevant than TM on reducing SL in Mexican workers.Practical implicationsThis paper assists in the control for conditions that can cause SL and helps to devise interventions that motivate Mexican workers.Originality/valueNovelty resides in the inclusion of RM as a new variable in SL studies. Also, in showing how RM fits better than TM as means to motivate Mexican workers, connecting with WM. Finally, proving relevance of examining co-workers and not only supervisors' evaluations.