Hazing and Team Cohesion

Hazing and Team Cohesion

The Problem

Hazing and Team cohesion remains the most important aspect in today's world of sports. Sports are normally assumed to be associated with the spirit of team building. Hazing is essentially unaccepted socially due to various underlying reasons. However, there are some people who still believe that hazing serves an important role within the team functions. Teams need to be properly motivated, and therefore team cohesion remains extremely important (Carron, Widmeyer & Brawley, 1985). The problem that will be researched within this paper relates to the relationship of hazing and team cohesion. The research will explore that whether any significant relationship between hazing and team cohesion exits or not. Moreover, the extent of relationship between the aspects of hazing and team cohesion will also be assessed in this research. The purpose of this research is to make the sportsmen aware of the underlying relationships between hazing and team cohesion and the underlying impact the aspects of hazing and team cohesion have over the performance of the sportsmen.

Research Question

Is there a significant relationship between hazing and team cohesion?

Research Hypothesis

H0: There is a significant relationship between hazing and team cohesion.

H1: There is no significant relationship between hazing and team cohesion.

Review of the Literature

The sportsmen spirit revolves heavily around the activities that intend to motivate sportsmen to work in progressively in groups. Teams must realize that they are playing together either for their country, school, league or any other unit (Van, Cornelius, Linder, Brewer, 2007). Individuals within teams need to think of winning together. Performing individually does not usually result in the team winning. Therefore, all the individuals need to be motivated enough to support each other in making the team win regardless of their individual or personal differences. Team cohesion is the most important aspect of team building in relation with sports (Crowne & Maelow, 2002). Teams need to be cohesive enough to outlay the opponents. However, there is a thin line between hazing and activities that enhance the cohesiveness between teams (Crowne & Maelow, 2002).

Hazing is referred to the activities within group which abuses, humiliates or even degrades the individuals and tends to ignore the willingness of the individuals in order to participate in the team activities. Hazing is also termed as initiation within sports (Carron, Widmeyer & Brawley, 1985). Since the purpose of this paper is to analyze the significant relationship between hazing and team cohesiveness, it remains extremely important to focus over the fact that there is an extremely thin line between the team cohesion activities that usually lead to hazing. Crossing the lines in order to increase the team cohesiveness remains the most important aspect to be analyzed by the teams. There is a need to clearly identify the thin line between the hazing activities and the team cohesive activities (Van, Cornelius, Linder, Brewer, 2007).

Within United States of America, hazing is illegal in almost 44 states (Gratton & Jones, 2010). However, there are people who still believe that hazing is ...