Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

17
Making Group Process Work:
Harnessing Collective Intuition,
Task Confl ict, and Pacing
GERARDO A. OKHUYSEN AND BETH A. BECHKY
Imagine, if you will, two groups with very similar members. Both have exceptionally talented
individuals at the helm, committed participants, and compelling challenges that
they must respond to. However, while in one group members actively share information,
disagree with one another, and press ahead for action, in the other group members are
passive, have little discussion of the challenges for the group, and adopt attitudes that
make getting along more important than getting work done. The difference between these
two groups is at the crux of this chapter and answers the question, does group process
matter? By group process, we simply mean how group members go about interacting and
making choices to get their work done.
The groups we discuss include shop floor teams that develop process improvements,
surgery teams, cross - functional product development groups, police crisis teams, ongoing
task forces, film project teams, and top management teams. In general, these are groups
that demand active engagement and intense interaction among group members (Ashforth
and Fried, 1988 ; Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, and Bourgeois, 1997a ; Louis and Sutton, 1991 ).
Our central argument is straightforward. Although the membership of groups enables
and constrains many of their activities, a central element that causes some groups to succeed
and others to fail is group process. With a positive group process, a team of average
individuals can perform better than a group of superstars with a bad group process. For
us, group process opens the doors to the performance of individuals as part of a successful
group. With poor group process, the doors to that performance remain closed.
Many people naively believe that effective group process requires group members to make
difficult process tradeoffs: conflict comes at the expense of speed, speed sacrifi ces getting
along, and getting along cannot happen with conflict. Yet we think that the reality of effective
group process is different. After all, conflict is absolutely essential for effective groups,