Benefits of group work
A group with a positive dynamic is easy to spot. Team members trust one another, they work towards a collective decision, and they hold one another accountable for making things happen. As well as this, researchers have found that when a team has a positive dynamic, its members are nearly twice as creative as an average group.
Reductionism and Coordination Tasks
Let us examine how reductionism applies to coordination tasks. The probability that a group will contain an incompetent member increases as the group's size gets larger. Thus, it is likely that bigger groups will fail more often than smaller groups. In fact, the Lorge/Solomon Model A formula shows this idea vividly. To repeat the previous example, let us imagine that both Sue Blue and Joe Schmo have a 40 percent chance of completing a task and a 60 percent of not completing it. Again let us assume that interaction with one another has no effect on their performance. Now remember that in coordination tasks the entire group fails if any one member cannot complete it. Using the same logic as before, the odds that Sue and Joe will not both complete the task is:
S= 1-Cm
(S = the likelihood that the group complete the task; C = the likelihood that each member will complete the task; and m = the number of persons in the group. Note how C, the odds that each member will be successful, replaces F, the odds that each member will fail, in the context of coordination tasks.)
In this case, 1-C2 equals 1-.402 or .84. With a group of four people having the same skill level as Sue and Joe, the odds of the group failing will increase to nearly 98 percent.
Frank and Anderson (1971) did an experiment based on this reasoning. They asked groups of two, three, five, and eight members to perform nine tasks. The projects required that group members generate ideas. For example, a group might write down three arguments for, and three arguments against, legalized gambling. The researchers made the project into a
Reductionism and Coordination Tasks
Let us examine how reductionism applies to coordination tasks. The probability that a group will contain an incompetent member increases as the group's size gets larger. Thus, it is likely that bigger groups will fail more often than smaller groups. In fact, the Lorge/Solomon Model A formula shows this idea vividly. To repeat the previous example, let us imagine that both Sue Blue and Joe Schmo have a 40 percent chance of completing a task and a 60 percent of not completing it. Again let us assume that interaction with one another has no effect on their performance. Now remember that in coordination tasks the entire group fails if any one member cannot complete it. Using the same logic as before, the odds that Sue and Joe will not both complete the task is:
S= 1-Cm
(S = the likelihood that the group complete the task; C = the likelihood that each member will complete the task; and m = the number of persons in the group. Note how C, the odds that each member will be successful, replaces F, the odds that each member will fail, in the context of coordination tasks.)
In this case, 1-C2 equals 1-.402 or .84. With a group of four people having the same skill level as Sue and Joe, the odds of the group failing will increase to nearly 98 percent.
Frank and Anderson (1971) did an experiment based on this reasoning. They asked groups of two, three, five, and eight members to perform nine tasks. The projects required that group members generate ideas. For example, a group might write down three arguments for, and three arguments against, legalized gambling. The researchers made the project into a