Characteristics of Group Decision Making

The ever changing market that exists today has brought about the idea of bringing multiple individuals with diverse backgrounds together and creating work groups. These work groups are becoming the norm in many companies. Work groups are generally but in place to tackle projects that would be better served by a group rather than an individual. One of the most important functions of a group is the ability to make effective decisions. The text describes that a group decision implies that an agreement is made among the members to determine which course of action is most effective for achieving the group’s goal. The purpose of group decision making is to decide on well-considered, well understood, realistic action toward goals every member wishes to achieve (Johnson and Johnson, 2009). Not only is it important for the group to make a decision together, they need to focus on making the most appropriate decision for the matter at hand. The text list five major characteristics of an effective group decision; the resources of group members are fully utilized, time is well used, the decision is correct or of high quality, the decision is implemented fully by all the required group members, and the problem solving ability of the group is improved, or at least not lessened (Johnson and Johnson, 2009). In this paper I will describe the group to which I belong and how the five characteristics of an effective group decision apply to the overall decision made by the group.
The group that I belong to was pulled together several months back to make decisions on pricing for our products. My company decided to pull associates from different departments like; sales, operations, finance, products and marketing and bring them together to come up with the best laid plan. The company has had to take a different approach to our pricing models after an amendment was brought to the floor at the last minute by a Senator to place yet another Regulation on banking. This amendment was

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