DECISION-MAKING IN GROUPS: SOME SPECIFIC ABOULIAS

Abstract

The questions the investigator asks about the phenomena under study in large part reveals his orientation. W. R. Bion, associated with the Tavistock group psychoanalytic school, has posed the following questions: Why does a group come together in the first place? What keeps a group together once it has formed? How does a group react to being deprived of a leader? What does it do when confronted with its own tensions? How do the members communicate with each other?' These profound questions omit one equally seminal question: How do groups make decisions? Or how do they fail to make decisions? This important omission serves to highlight the basic distinction between groups which meet primarily to re-integrate the personality of its members -usually referred to as therapy groups and those groups which meet primarily to introduce its members to the complex functioning of the group decision process.