This study compares decision processes of consensus and devil's advocacy within an additive
task, a disjunctive task, and a conjunctive task structure. The results suggest that high-conflict
decision processes such as devil's advocacy enhances decision making in disjunctive tasks,
retards decision making in additive tasks, but has no effect on decision making in conjunctive
tasks. Perceptions of the group's atmosphere were most positive within consensus groups.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aronson, E., Ellsworth, P.C., Carlsmith, J.M., & Gonzales, M.H. (1990). Methods of research in social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill .
Brodwin, D.R., & Bourgeois, L.J. III. (1984). Five steps to strategic action. In G. Carroll & D. Vogel (Eds.), Strategy and organization: A west coast perspective (pp. 167-181). Marshfield, MA: Pitman.
4.
Burst, A., & Schlesinger, L.A. (1987). The management game. New York: Viking.
5.
Chapanis, A., Parrish, R.N., Ochsman, R.B., & Weeks, G.D. (1977). Studies in interactive communication: The effects of four communication modes on the linguistic performance of teams during cooperative problem solving. Human Factors, 19, 101-126.
6.
Cosier, R.A. (1980). Inquiry method, goal difficulty, and context effects on performance. Decision Sciences, 11, 1-16.
7.
Cosier, R.A. (1982). Methods for improving the strategic decision: Dialectic versus the devil's advocate. Strategic Management Journal, 1, 373-374.
8.
Cosier, R.A., & Alpin, J.C. (1980). A critical view of dialectical inquiry as a tool in strategic planning. Strategic Management Journal, 1, 343-356.
9.
Diehl M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 497-509.
10.
Gaertner, S.L., Mann, J., Murrell, A., & Dovidio, J.F. (1989). Reducing inter-group bias: The benefits of recategorization . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57C2, 239-249.
11.
Guzzo, R.A. (Ed.) (1982). Improving group decision making in organizations: Approaches from theory and research . New York: Academic Press.
12.
Janis, I.L. (1972). Victims ofgroupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
13.
Leana, C.R. (1985). A partial test of Janis' groupthink model: Effects of group cohesiveness and leader behavior on defective decision making. Journal of Management, 11 (1), 5-17.
14.
Littlepage, G. (1991). Effects of group size and task characteristics on group performance: A test of Steiner's model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 449-456.
15.
Locke, E.A. (1986). Generalizing from laboratory to field settings . Lexington, MA: Lexington Books .
16.
Mason, R.O., & Mitroff, I.I. (1981). Challenging strategic planning assumptions: Theory, cases, and techniques. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
17.
Michaelsen, L.K., Watson, W.E., & Black, R.H. (1989). A realistic test of individual versus group consensus decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74, 834-839.
18.
Mintzberg, H., Raisinghani, D., & Theoret, A. (1976). The structure of "unstructured" decision processes . Administrative Science Quarterly,21, 246-275.
19.
Nadler, D.A., Hackman, J.R., & Lawler, E.E. (1979). Managing organizational behavior. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
20.
Nemiroff, P.M., Pasmore, W.A., & Ford, D.L. Jr. (1978). The effects of two normative structural interventions on established and ad hoc groups: Implications for improving decision making effectiveness. Decision Sciences, 7, 841-855.
21.
Pfeffer, J. (1982). Organizations and organization theory. Boston: Pitman.
22.
Schweiger, D.M., & Finger, PA (1984). The comparative effectiveness of dialectical inquiry and devil's advocacy: The impact of task biases on previous research findings . Strategic Management Journal, 5, 335-350.
23.
Schweiger, D.M., & Sandberg, W.R. (1988). The utilization of individual capabilities in group approaches to strategic decision-making. Strategic Managment Journal, 10, 31-43.
24.
Schweiger, D.M., Sandberg, W.R., & Ragan, J.W. (1986). Group approaches for improving strategic decision making: A comparative analysis of dialectical inquiry, devil's advocacy, and consensus. Academy of Management Journal, 29, 51-70.
25.
Schwenk, C., (1989). A meta-analysis on the comparative effectiveness of devil's advocacy and dialectical inquiry. Strategic Management Journal, 10, 303-306.
26.
Schwenk, C.R., & Cosier, R.A. (1980). Effects of the expert, devil's advocate, and dialectical inquiry methods on prediction performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 26, 409-424.
27.
Smeltzer, L.R. (1992). Supervisory-subordinate communication when mediated by audio-graphics teleconferencing. The Journal of Business Communication, 29, 161-178.
28.
Stasser, G., Kerr, N.L., & Davis, J.H. (1989). Influence processes and consensus models in decision making groups. In P.B. Paulus (Ed.), Psychology of group influence (pp. 279-326). Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
29.
Stasser, G., & Titus, W. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1467-1478.
30.
Steiner, I.D. (1965). Models for inferring relationships between group size and potential group productivity. Current Studies in Social Psychology, 11, 273-283.
31.
Steiner, I.D. (1972). Group process and productivity. New York: Academic Press.
32.
Zaccaro, S.J. (1984). Social loafing: The role of task attractiveness . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 99-106.
33.
Zaccaro, S.J., & Lowe, C.A. (1988). Cohesiveness and performance on an additive task: Evidence for multidimensionality. Journal of Social Psychology , 128, 547-558.
34.
Zaccaro, S.J., & McCoy, M.C. (1988). The effects of task and interpersonal cohesiveness on performance of a disjunctive group task. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 837-851.
35.
Zaccaro, S.J., Peterson, C., & Walker, S. (1987). Self-serving attributions for individual and group performance. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 257-263.
