Group Decision-Making Quality and Performance

Because of the need for broad representation and a wide range of expertise, group decision making is evident in product development teams, corporate boards, juries, and emergency medical teams. Group decision-making involves the process of reaching agreement on a given set of alternatives among multiple people. Through interaction and discussion, people’s positions and preferences are transformed into a consensus choice. What distinguishes group from individual decision making is the need to reconcile the various positions and preferences into a collective decision. Research in this literature has mostly focused on small groups—groups with 4 to 7 members—but groups can reach up to 12 members in jury situations. A common assumption is that groups can make higher quality decisions and better detect errors than a single person. ...