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Explore the benefits and pitfalls of group learning and decision-making, including advantages like increased knowledge pool and diverse perspectives, against challenges like groupthink and common knowledge effect.
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Introduction to knowledge management Teamwork
Team Production of KnowledgeWuchty et al. 2007, Science • Over the span of 5 decades, no. of authors • Almost all fields increase in team size • Teams more highly cited • Effect is increasing over time • Especially for highly cited papers
Whitley, Richard. The Social and Intellectual Organization of the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Collective intelligence The conditions under which group perform better Carnage Mellon experiment Social intelligence Percentage of women Turn taking
Advantages of team decision-making • Increased pool of knowledge to draw upon • Increased acceptance and commitment of the selected decision • Wider range of perspectives taken into consideration • Novice team members can learn from more experienced team members (internalization) • Greater understanding of the rationale of the selected decision
Advantages of group learning • 1. Disagreement • 2. Alternative • 3. Explanation • 4. Internalization • 5. Appropriation • 6. Shared load • 7. Regulation • 8. Synchronicity 林東清 p. 175-176
Disadvantages • Common knowledge effect • Conformity can stifle creativity • Groupthink can override individual judgment • Group polarization can lead to overly risky decision • Diffusion of responsibility leads individuals to avoid feeling responsible • Satisficing so that the decision is acceptable rather than optimum
Yet…common knowledge effect • Information held by all or most group member has the biggest influence on group judgments, for more than information held by one member or a few. • It was almost as likely for a shared item to be mentioned twice as it was for an unshared item to be mentioned at all. • Disproportionately little weight was given to valuable information held by one person or a few • A group’s focus on shared information increases with the size of the group
Group polarization • Following the group discussion, individuals tend to make more extreme decision than when working along. (filter bubble) • Social comparison (Jerry Springer) During group discussion we compare our decision with the decision of the others in the group Newell et al., p. 52
Confident and unified • Group members tend to become a lot more confident about their judgments after speaking with one another • Deliberation usually promotes uniformity by decreasing the range of views within groups
Promote a sense of legitimacy • An appreciation, by many people, that they have be able to participant in the decision process • Sometimes what matters most is that many minds accept the decision , not that the decision be correct.
Groupthink • The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view
Us vs. them mentality How politics can break our brain Atlantics article
Partisanship at work • "Would you say that compared to 2008, the level of unemployment in this country has gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse?" A separate group saw this one: • "Would you say that the level of unemployment in this country has gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse since Barack Obama was elected President?“ How about? • "The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows unemployment has increased by 4.6 percent since 2008. Would you say that the level of unemployment in this country has gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse since Barack Obama was elected President?" • Politics wrecks your brain ;
Devil’s advocate • During the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith, popularly known as the Devil's Advocate, was a canon lawyer appointed by the Church to argue against the canonization of the candidate. It was his job to take a skeptical view of the candidate's character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, etc
Symptoms of groupthink • Illusion of invulnerability • Collective rationalization • Illusion of morality • Shared stereotypes • Direct pressure • Self-censorship • Mind-guards • Illusion of unanimity
Possible causes • Cohesiveness • Group isolation/insulation • Leader intimidation • An absence of decision-making procedures
Steps for Minimizing Groupthink • Group leader encourages thoughtfulness/ criticism • Group leader refrains from expressing own opinion and views until group has considered all alternatives • Group leader encourages group members to gather information from outside people • Group leader assigns devil’s advocate • Group leader holds second meeting for important decisions
Common information problem • “…although deliberating groups often fail to spread information, they are less likely to neglect unshared information if they believe that there is a demonstrably correct answer to the question they are trying to answer”
Diversity and group success • Exposure to unfamiliar perspective fosters creativity
Group Dummy Model ＋ = <
Group Wisdom May involve the benefits of complementarity of skills and knowledge ＋ = >
Group Genius or Synergy • Groups generate more and/or better ideas • Teams more than sum of their parts ＋ = >
Gigerenzer, p.77 • Everyone on the same plane • Start on equal footing • Daily social gathering • Shared success • Open doors
Creative abrasion • Intellectual diversity leads to creative abrasion • In a highly diverse group, collectively they have the potential of generating numerous perspectives and those perspectives can then be combined in novel and useful ways
Diversity AND perspective taking • When diverse teams took each other’s perspective, they performed more creatively than teams whose members were similar • The starting point is to be conscious of our biases, which is often unknown to us.
Team task • A three-member, cross-functional team, comprised of the finance, sales, advertising, catering, and operations managers of an upscale, 4000 seat theater in downtown Chicago, make a critical new product decision. Each member of the team has a different agenda and incentives. The exercise focuses on the common-information effect and cross-functional team members as information silos. Hoever, Inga J., et al. "Fostering team creativity: Perspective taking as key to unlocking diversity's potential." Journal of applied psychology 97.5 (2012): 982.
Manipulation • Diversity • Members were assigned the roles of the artistic, event and finance manager • Perspective taking • Try to take ach other’s perspectives as much as possible and • were asked to jointly review a page of written instructions on what perspective taking entailed • Define what it is • Try to understand how other view the situation and ask themselves what is important to other person • Performance at stake TED: How to turn a group of strangers into teams
Perspective taking Our ability to empathize with someone else and see things from their perspective.
Collective intelligence: what make a group smart? Test your social intelligence
Trust • “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”
Team work: the social dimension • Trust (see case study ) • Companion • Competence • Commitment • Social intelligence • Cognitive diversity
Enabling context for knowledge creation • Mutual trust • Active empathy • Access to help • Leniency in judgment • Courage
Teamwork: the social dimension • Social intelligence • Cognitive diversity • Avoid group think • Trust (see case study ) • Companion • Competence • Commitment
Source: Pentland, A. (2012). The new science of building great teams. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 60-69. How good ideas spread
