Team syntegrity and democratic group decision making: theory and practice

Abstract

Stafford Beer created Team Syntegrity as a methodology for social interaction that predisposes participants towards shared agreement among varied and sometimes conflicting interests, without compromising the legitimate claims and integrity of those interests. This paper outlines the methodology and the underlying philosophy, describing several applications in a variety of countries and contexts, indicating why such an approach causes us to re-think more traditional approaches to group decision processes, and relating Team Syntegrity to other systems approaches.

Keywords:

• OR/problem structuring
• systems thinking
• democratic group decisions
• cybernetics
• Team Syntegrity

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professor M Jackson, who one of the authors worked with an earliest paper related to this research and to Dr J Walker for his continuous support and comments.