Individual Decision Making vs Group Decision Making

‘Given the potential problems associated with group decision making, organisations should rely on individual decision making whenever possible’. How far do you agree/disagree with this statement?
From the days when working conditions were under the strict rules of Taylorism, workers these days are required to be equipped with various soft skills and not to forget, the important value of teamwork. Organisations present-day depend heavily on teamwork. Questions such as “what strengths can you bring to the team?” and “are you a team player?” are being asked by corporations whilst hiring new workers. However, behind these ‘teamwork’ scenarios, Hackman (2002) explains that reality imposes that majority of organisations were started and led by a single talented and courageous human being rather than by a team, no matter how many well-qualified members the team includes. Hence, is resolving matter in a group as effective compared to being solved by a single individual? Included this essay will be a simple explanation of the formation and development of groups as well as the detailed problems faced by group decision making. Additionally both problems faced by group and individual while deciding will be compared amongst each other and finally bringing to a close, which technique of decision making is better: group or individual. Plus, various real life examples of group and individual decision making will be brought in to strengthen the points laid out in this essay. Many authors such as Mackin (1993) take great care to distinguish the difference between the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’. However, as the debate on this particular topic is rather frustrating and not related to the main topic , both the terms ‘group’ and ‘team’ will be considered the same and be used interchangeably in this essay. For this reason, according to Katzenbach and Smith (1993) the more accepted definition of a team is a small number of people with complementary skills working towards a common goal and

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