Groups commonly make decisions in organizations.⁴² For example, groups are often asked to decide what new product should be offered to customers, how policies for promotion should be improved, and how the organization should reach higher production goals. Groups are so often asked to make organizational decisions because certain advantages come with having a group of people rather than an individual manager make a decision. One advantage is that a group can generally come up with more and better decision alternatives than an individual can: A group can draw on collective, diverse organizational experiences as the foundation for decision making, whereas an individual manager has only his or her limited experiences to draw on.⁴³ Another advantage is that when a group makes a decision, the members of that group tend to support the implementation of the decision more fervently than they would if the decision had been made by an individual. This support can be of significant help to a manager in successfully implementing a decision. A third advantage of using a group rather than an individual to make a decision is that group members tend to regard the decision as their own, and this feeling of ownership makes it more likely that they will strive to implement the decision successfully rather than prematurely give in to failure.

However, having groups rather than individual managers make organizational decisions may also involve some disadvantages. Perhaps the most-often-discussed disadvantage is that it takes longer for groups to make a decision because groups must take the time to present and discuss all members’ views. Another disadvantage is that group decisions cost the organization more than individual decisions do simply because group decisions take up the time of more people in the organization. Finally, group decisions can be of lower quality than individual decisions if they become contaminated by the group members’ efforts to maintain friendly relationships among themselves. This phenomenon of compromising the quality of a decision to maintain relationships within a group is referred to as groupthink and is discussed more fully in Chapter 15, “Groups and Teams.” ⁴⁵

Managers must weigh all these advantages and disadvantages of group decision making carefully, factoring in unique organizational situations, and give a group the authority to make a decision only when the advantages of doing so clearly outweigh the disadvantages.

Making a sound group decision regarding complex organizational circumstances is a formidable challenge. Fortunately, several useful processes have been developed to assist groups in meeting this challenge. The following sections discuss three such processes: brainstorming, nominal group technique, and Delphi technique.

All three of the processes just presented for assisting groups in reaching decisions have both advantages and disadvantages. Brainstorming offers the advantage of encouraging the expression of as many useful ideas as possible but also offers the disadvantage of wasting the group’s time on ideas that are wildly impractical. The nominal group technique, with its secret ballot, offers a structure in which individuals can support or reject an idea without fear of recrimination. Its disadvantage is that group members have no way of knowing why individuals voted the way they did. The advantage of the Delphi technique is that ideas can be gathered from group members who are too geographically separated or busy to meet face-to-face. Its disadvantage is that members are unable to ask questions of one another.

As with any other management tool, managers must carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of these three group decision-making tools and adopt the one—or some combination of the three—that best suits their unique organizational circumstances.