Abstract

A growing body of management research has suggested that consensus (interacting) groups exhibit superior performance on many organizational tasks, such as selecting R&D proposals for funding, planning innovative projects and exercising quality control during project implementation. The main objective of this research was to address the question of whether or not the already good performance of consensus groups on project planning tasks could be further improved by a relatively simple diagnosis and feedback intervention concerning the nature of the groups' rational and interpersonal processes. Since this study focuses on the quality of the groups' output, it was hypothesized that feedback on rational processes would have a more significant impact on the quality of group output than would interpersonal feedback. The experimental design for this study provided for four types of groups: control groups who received no feedback; groups receiving feedback only on their interpersonal processes; groups receiving feedback on their rational processes; and full treatment groups that received feedback on both their interpersonal and rational processes. Data from a total of 114 groups (547 individuals) were collected. Several practical implications for the management of groups can be drawn from this research. The intervention used in this study was a limited nature but it did have a positive effect on a large number of groups and did not improve the planning performance of those groups. Such a relatively inexpensive and time efficient intervention should receive serious managerial consideration.


Click on the link below for the final report in pdf.
kernaghan_cooke_1088.pdf