Group Decision-making

Group meetings are a ubiquitous feature of most organizations. Countless hours are spent in meetings communicating information, discussing issues, and making decisions. Many believe that this time is well spent, because group decision-making will generally be better than the decision-making made by individuals. However, both academic research and human history show that group decision-making is no guarantee of decision quality.

A variety of well-established processes, such as informational and normative influence, majority and minority influence, group polarization, groupthink, and organizational politics, can seriously undermine the quality of group decision-making.

To take just one example of this, in the consensus meetings (or “wash-up” sessions) typically used in assessment centres, research shows that discussions amongst assessors do not improve, and may even interfere with, decisions about which candidates to select.

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