Collective task vs coactive task

[keannu]

Source : SAT Completion, 14-1, publisher : Korean Education Broadcasting System, author : unknown

Although a number of definitions of social loafing are available, the one proposed by Steven Karau and Kipling Williams is arguably the most complete. These authors define social loafing as the reduction in motivation and effort that occurs when individuals work on a collective task as opposed to coactive or individual tasks. Collective tasks are those that most people would intuitively call a group task. In collective conditions, individuals work with other group members toward a single goal. Thus, individual performance is pooled to produce the group’s total performance. Conversely, individuals working in coactive conditions work in the presence of others, but each individual’s work remains separate from that of others at all times. People working individually do not work in the presence of others, and their work remains separate from that of others.

Can you think of an example of co-active task? I think most tasks done at companies are "collective tasks". But I can't understand what "co-active task" is.

 

[probus]

Hospitals provide a good example of coactive tasks. It is the doctors' responsibility to determine what is wrong with the patient and what should be done about it: diagnosis and prescription. Lab technicians carry out diagnostic tests ordered by doctors. The actual delivery of care is performed by nurses. If drugs are part of your treatment, for example, they give them to you and ensure that you take them. These activities are parts of a common purpose: the treatment and cure of disease.

 

[probus]

Like Piscean I have never before encountered the word coactive. I agree that the hospital tasks are mostly collective rather that coactive according to the strict definition.

I recently had a hospital procedure that was strictly coactive. A physician administered a drug by injection using ct scan guidance to target it precisely, directing the imaging technician while pressing the plunger of the syringe. This distiction between collective and coactive is a pretty nice one, and I'm not sure it is worth making in most cases.

 

[Tarheel]

It seems that I have reached a certain age where every new word I learn is one I'm not going to use.

 

[abaka]

I gather "coactive tasks" are simply the component pieces of work, the separate but connected chores, required by what was traditionally called a collective goal -- in the hospital's case, presumably to treat and succour the sick. I should not object if these were called collective tasks.

Like Piscean, I don't like "collective tasks" as they are used here. If a task requires more than one person to complete it, it is, as Piscean has pointed out, a group task -- or, equally, a collaborative task.

I think the word "coactive" was invented by someone without a proper understanding of collective goals and collective work.