Sharing Doesn't Necessarily Mean Caring

Being a student here at Illinois, especially in business, I have participated in countless groups with the task of completing a case study.  These cases usually involve a huge amount of information and it is your job to pick out what is relevant and respond to the questions posed by the professor.  Many times, working together on these cases is allowed, and even encouraged with the only requirement being that you turn in your own finished case.  Some might question why that is and say that makes it too easy.  To understand why the professors encourage this you have to remember the reason behind working these cases.  There is not necessarily a right answer, it is the quality of the solution and the thinking to get to that solution that matters most.  It also allows the class to be more efficient at picking out what information matters and stimulates better discussion during the class.  

So what does this have to do with the article?  In this situation especially, since everyone is responsible for their own finished product, there is no requirement to share what you have discovered and what you believe the answer might be.  A lack of sharing can lead to several things.  Some students will have the better solutions while the others will be lacking.  In addition, when it comes time to discuss the case in class, the discussion is lacking because while there may be some good answers students have thought of, the ideas haven’t been developed further through team discussion and debate.  Typically, and I have experienced this personally, the answers people come up with individually are rarely as deep or well thought out as something that the team comes up with through discussion. On the flip side of this, the expectation to share with the entire group can lead to free riders, also something I have experienced.  Members of the class who you have worked with in the past expect that you will do the groundwork for them and they will be able to take what you have come up with, tweak it a bit, and turn it in.  While this does not necessarily get them outstanding grades, it does place more stress on the members who do contribute, since they are forced to develop the ideas with less help doing so.

In my experience, the findings of the article are consistent with what occurs in these “individual but group collaboration allowed” assignments.  Consider the first situation, where the marbles roll out when both parties pull.  In my case, when people are doing the same amount of work but there happens to be a member of the group who has more information, whether it be from simply knowing someone who has great ideas or having information from past classes such as notes, the person with more information/ideas is perfectly willing to share that with the group.  However, as in the second case where the number of marbles were predetermined, when the person with the better information feels they are doing all of the work and the other members are simply waiting for the information to be handed to them, all motivation to share that information vanishes.  Finally, in the third case, where the marbles come out in different amounts regardless of work done, the results are similar to what would occur with no collaboration.  Sure, everyone does their fair share of work (pulls the rope), but the results of their efforts differ.  Since the students have been working independently, there is no motivation to share the efforts of their own work with anyone else.