The “all-for-one, one-for-all” attitude: Does it exist in the workplace today?A study by an Ohio State associate business professor on how teams are selected in the workplace found that students in the study believed random selection was the best way to assign members to teams. The study, co-authored by Howard Klein, OSU associate business professor of management and human resources, and Jeffrey Miles, a former OSU doctoral student who is now at the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif. focused on how managers select teams to perform tasks in the workplace.”The idea for the study came from the fact that there are a lot of teams being formed in the workplace today,” Klein said. “It’s not a surprise that people have self-interest in mind when it comes to being assigned to teams in the workplace.”Researchers assigned 137 students to four different experimental groups, Klein said. The first two groups were randomly selected, but researchers told students in the second group they had been chosen because they scored highest on a test. In the third and fourth groups, personal influence played a role because some students received special privileges if they knew a particular professor. The study found that randomly selected students thought the process was more fair than those selected by other means. Those selected randomly also scored highest on a math test.The results of the study found that managers should put more effort into assigning teams in the workplace, Klein said.”I wasn’t terribly surprised by the results of the study,” he said. “Even in a laboratory setting, we saw a difference in how people performed based on how we formed the teams.”A lot of OSU students can relate to the study because they find themselves at the mercy of managers while working during their college years.”I used to hate clean up at BW-3’s,” said Nate Ebert, a senior majoring in chemistry. “I wish the managers would have assigned tasks more fairly then they did.””Every job has things that suck about it. As an employee, it’s your job to do them,” said Justin Brown, a senior business major and former waiter at 55 Grille. “It’s not the manager’s fault if you don’t like the job.”Ben Moon, a senior majoring in British literature who used to work at Dairy Queen, said he thought his former managers did a good job assigning tasks.”They were pretty easy to work with, the job was easy,” Moon said. “I really don’t have any complaints about how the managers did their jobs.”Rich Rogan, a manager of the North High Street Taco Bell, said he does his best to treat workers fairly.”We try to rotate jobs, so no one feels they’re being picked on when it comes to performing certain tasks,” Rogan said. Klein thinks this study is important because it aids in a person’s ability to manage others successfully.”Management is the alignment of organizational and personal goals,” Klein said. “This study shows that management skills are important.”Because this was an exploratory study, it’s too early to draw broad conclusions about the best ways for managers to form teams, Klein said.”Our goal in doing this study was to see if the way people were assigned to teams affected their performance,” Klein said. “The answer is yes, it does, both in terms of attitude and performance.”