Groupthink

Groupthink refers to the process that leads a group of capable and talented members to render a poor, often disastrous, group decision. The term was coined by Irving Janis in 1972 as a result of his investigations of famously bad group decisions in recent history, most notably the decision by President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1960. Kennedy's cabinet, arguably the best educated in American history, recommended that Kennedy send a squad of Cuban dissidents to invade [Page 636]Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. The dissidents were poorly trained and armed with World War I surplus arms, and they had been sent in a leaking boat. The mission was so badly executed that, by the time the squad arrived at the bay, Castro's troops were waiting for them, took them hostage, and ransomed them back to Kennedy. More recently, authors have identified a number of other real-world situations that may well have resulted from groupthink: the decision to launch the Challenger space shuttle despite engineers' warnings that a launch was not wise, the decision to alter the formula for Coca-Cola despite the fact that it was the best-selling soft drink in the world, and a series of promotional campaigns by Burger King that produced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and contributed to its losing market share in the fast food industry.