ABSTRACT
Work avoidance flows naturally from the premises of market analysts: work is a disutility and pay and leisure are the compensations for incurring the sacrifice. Pay as the compensation for giving up leisure suggests an unpleasant interpretation of work avoidance. This chapter analyzes two theories and their related research explaining work avoidance: the "logic of collective action" and "social loafing". The Logic has, for good reasons, captured the imagination of all the social sciences, but for better reasons it must be seen as having a limited ability to explain known cases of work avoidance or other shirking behavior in large groups. Social scientists almost universally agree that the mam operating motive in social situations is the desire for the approval of others, for social support, for solidarity in a group. The market, as contrasted to social organizations, is the arena where the terms of the Logic are most likely to apply.
