Behaviors leading to more effective decisions in small groups embedded in organizations

Abstract

Although recent group communication research has investigated the efficacy of meeting global functions in improving group decision making, little work has been done to identify specific types of utterances that would meet these functions. Furthermore, most of this work has used students placed into ad hoc groups as participants. This paper identifies behaviors that participants in small organizational groups perceive as affecting the quality of decisions made by those groups. Exploratory factor analysis was used in two studies to identify these behaviors. In both studies reported here, three consistent factors emerged: full participation of the group members, the presence of negative socio‐emotional behaviors, and the presence of positive social emotional behaviors.