Free Riders!

Today I will talk about a special breed of MBA grads (in the making) whom I've encountered during these 2.5 months at XLRI - the free riders!
How does one define free riders? Non contributing members of a project who are a liability on the remaining team members are affectionately called free riders. They are really a sad breed among MBAs. They fail to understand the responsibilities which they are expected to shoulder. These are people who believe in the theory of symbiotic living but only partially. They will stick on with you, contribute nothing, reap the benefit and move ahead. Their focus is solely on how not to come in limelight and how to hide their incompetency. They do not show any sense of self consciousness or shame in blatantly copying other people's work. True believers of social theory of justice. The worst part is that some of these people even go to the extent of calling themselves smart workers.
There are many competent people who free-ride. These people can be of 2 types - those who are plain lazy and do not give a damn and those who will do all their individual assignments arduously but will slack off when it comes to group work as they know that someone else will surely do the job.
So, how to stop this menace? I have a simple solution. In general, each member of the group receives the same grade on the project/assignment. However, there may be times when one or more members of a group will free ride on the work of other members. The grades of such free riders should be substantially reduced (up to 25% from the total grade) if consistent evidence of free riding is found. To discover free riding, each member of a group may submit an individual Group Peer-Evaluation Form around the time when the group’s project/assignment is submitted. If someone does not submit a Group Self-Evaluation Form, the Professor will assume that, from this student’s perspective, at least, no free riding problems existed.