Individual Decision Making vs Group Decision Making
‘Given the potential problems associated with group decision making, organisations should rely on individual decision making whenever possible’. How far do you agree/disagree with this statement?
From the days when working conditions were under the strict rules of Taylorism, workers these days are required to be equipped with various soft skills and not to forget, the important value of teamwork. Organisations present-day depend heavily on teamwork. Questions such as “what strengths can you bring to the team?” and “are you a team player?” are being asked by corporations whilst hiring new workers. However, behind these ‘teamwork’ scenarios, Hackman (2002) explains that reality imposes that majority of organisations were started and led by a single talented and courageous human being rather than by a team, no matter how many well-qualified members the team includes. Hence, is resolving matter in a group as effective compared to being solved by a single individual? Included this essay will be a simple explanation of the formation and development of groups as well as the detailed problems faced by group decision making. Additionally both problems faced by group and individual while deciding will be compared amongst each other and finally bringing to a close, which technique of decision making is better: group or individual. Plus, various real life examples of group and individual decision making will be brought in to strengthen the points laid out in this essay. Many authors such as Mackin (1993) take great care to distinguish the difference between the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’. However, as the debate on this particular topic is rather frustrating and not related to the main topic , both the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’ will be considered the same and be used interchangeably in this essay. For this reason, according to Katzenbach and Smith (1993) the more accepted definition of a team is a small number of people with complementary skills working towards a common goal and
From the days when working conditions were under the strict rules of Taylorism, workers these days are required to be equipped with various soft skills and not to forget, the important value of teamwork. Organisations present-day depend heavily on teamwork. Questions such as “what strengths can you bring to the team?” and “are you a team player?” are being asked by corporations whilst hiring new workers. However, behind these ‘teamwork’ scenarios, Hackman (2002) explains that reality imposes that majority of organisations were started and led by a single talented and courageous human being rather than by a team, no matter how many well-qualified members the team includes. Hence, is resolving matter in a group as effective compared to being solved by a single individual? Included this essay will be a simple explanation of the formation and development of groups as well as the detailed problems faced by group decision making. Additionally both problems faced by group and individual while deciding will be compared amongst each other and finally bringing to a close, which technique of decision making is better: group or individual. Plus, various real life examples of group and individual decision making will be brought in to strengthen the points laid out in this essay. Many authors such as Mackin (1993) take great care to distinguish the difference between the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’. However, as the debate on this particular topic is rather frustrating and not related to the main topic , both the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’ will be considered the same and be used interchangeably in this essay. For this reason, according to Katzenbach and Smith (1993) the more accepted definition of a team is a small number of people with complementary skills working towards a common goal and
Bibliography: (n.d.). Retrieved December 19, 2010, from ITS Tutorial School: http://www.tuition.com.hk/groups.htm (2006, April 10). Retrieved from ScienceDaily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060410162259.htm Berkowitz, L. (1974). Stages of group development in a mental health team. Psychiatric Quarterly , 48(3), 309-319. Bettenhausen, K., & Murnighan, J. (1991). The development of an intra group norm and the effects of interpersonal and structural changes. Administrative Science Quarterly 36 , 20-35. Cason, T., & Mui, V.-L. (1997). A laboratory study on group polarisation in the team dictator game. Economic Journal , 1465-1483. Cherrington, D. (1989). Organisational Behaviour: The Management Individual and Organsiational Performance. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). The emotional reality of teams. Journal of Organizational Excellence, 21(2) , 55-65. Gould, D. (2005, June 5). Retrieved December 18, 2010, from Fifth Generation Work - Virtual Organization: http://www.seanet.com/~daveg/vrteams.htm Gwyne, P. (2009). Managing Culturally Diverse Team. Research-Technology Management , 52(1) pp. 68-69. Hackman, J. (2002). Leading Teams. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corportaion. Joyce, P., & Woods, A. (1992). The Organisation 's Role in Employment Training. Journal of European Industrial Training , 17. Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organisation. Harvard Business Review , 4428. Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A Radical View. London: MacMillan. Mackin, D. (1993). The Team Building Tool Kit . New York: AMACOM. Rangel, E. K. (2009). Clinical Ethics and the Dynamics of Group Decision-Making: Applying the Psychological Data to Decisions Made by Ethics Committees. HEC Forum, 21(2) , 207. Rosenfield, R. H., & Wilson, D. C. (1999). Managing Organizations, 2nd Edition: Text, Reading and Cases. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Sam, R., & Galinsky, M. J. (1974). A conceptual framework for group development. In P. Glasser, R. Sarri, & R. Vinter, (Eds.). In Individual change through small groups (pp. 71-88). New York: Free Press. Schattsneider, E. (1960). The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realists ' View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Shin, S.-Y., & Park, W.-W. (2009). Moderating Effects of Group Cohesiveness in CompetencyPerformance Relationships: A Multi-Level Study. Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business, 1(1) , 1. Smith, G. (2001). Group development: A review of the literature and a commentary on future research directions. Group Facilitation , 14. Stoner, J. (1968). Risky and Cautious Shift in group decision: the influence of widely held values. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4 , 442-459. Straker, D. (2005). Changing Minds. Boston: Syque Press. Tosi, H. L., P. Mero, N., & R. Rizzo, J. (2000). Managing Organizational Behavior, 4th Edition. Malden: Blackwell Publishers Inc. Wilson, D., Hickson, D., Butler, R., Cray, D., & Mallory, G. (1986). Breaking the bounds of organization in strategic decision-making. Human Relations, 39(4) , 309-331.