OB & HRM
Assignment 1
Faizan Saif (18U00021)
Section A
People believe that group decisions always work better than individual decisions but the reading
provided us with evidence that contradicts the traditional belief. Groups decisions goes wrong for
two prominent reasons, informational communication and fear of losing reputation.
Informational communication error makes people act according to wrong information received
from their group members. Other reason is the fear of being not part of the group by having
different views so people accept whatever the group decides even if the decision is wrong. These
two main reasons give rise too closely related four problems that makes the group go astray.
Rather than working in the direction to correct the errors of their group members the group
members increase the errors. Groups fell prey to many biases and fallacies. Planning fallacy is
more prominent in groups they tend to move toward easier tasks and are more hopeful regarding
the time and resources needed for a task. Groups intensify their efforts toward failing task as
compared to individuals. Groups also show increased dependance on representativeness
heuristic; believing people are same in every way. If group members make errors then other
members also move along the same path just to not feel left out. Furthermore, the informational
spillover by others make the group members silent as they feel respect toward other members
and toward their information. In reputational effect, group members keep them self out from
decisions as they fear criticism from the other members of the group. The new ideas generated
by individuals are buried under the ideas of other group members in groups and creativity is
demolished. Other reason for the error of groups is polarization that occur due to three reasons,
groups members favor the initial arguments so they move toward more extreme points, members
adjust their thoughts according to the thoughts of dominant members of the group, and gaining
confidence leads members toward overconfidence. Fourth reason for the error is that group
members only listen to the most commonly held information and neglect the important
information held by individual members.
However, all the above-mentioned errors can be reduced by the following actions. Group leaders
let the individual speaks and share their important information with the group members and let
information flow from individuals to all the members. Leaders must give critical thinking task to
OB & HRM
Assignment 1
the members and promotes information sharing environment within the group from the start.
Negative spillover effects can be reduced by group reward system as that way individual will
speak up for their group decisions. Assign different roles to group members so they each share
information related to their roles. Appoints people within group that can reject the ideas of
members without feeling social pressure it will give others confidence. Red teaming approach
can also be used to find out group mistakes and inefficiencies, this will increase the flow
information between members. Provide a system in which judgments and votes are casted
without members identification but after consideration, it will reduce reputational pressures from
the members.