Reaching consensus on consensus: A study of the relationships between individual decision-making styles and use of the consensus decision rule

Headnote

The present study investigated relationships behmen individual decision-making styles, procedural talk, and emergent group decision rules. Individual participants in 57 decision-making groups reported their preferences for each of five individual decision-making styles. These preferences were weighted by the amount of each member's procedural talk to estimate communicative attempts to influence the group's emergent decision rule. Significant positive correlations were found between the percentage of group members perceiving the establishment of a consensus decision rule and group members' weighted preferences for rational and dependent individual decision-making styles. The authors conclude by suggesting the theoretical and practical significance of these findings.

KEY CONCEPTS Consensus, small group decision making, procedural talk, individual decision-making style, decision rule

There is a growing body of research devoted to delineating and measuring individual decision-making styles (Coscarelli, Burk, & Cotter, 1995). Small group researchers also have identified and characterized a variety of emergent group decision rules (Johnson & Johnson, 1997). The discovery of relationships between individual decision-making styles and group decision rules could have important implications for organizations, especially those that rely on work groups to make important decisions. Uncovering such relationships could provide supervisors with guiding principles that would aid them in their efforts to assemble optimal decision-making groups.

One particular group decision rule - consensus - is often viewed by work groups as an ideal way to make decisions. Although group members may strive to establish a consensus decision rule, they may fall short of this goal and have only a subgroup of members working under consensus procedures. Most writings on group decision rules describe them as clear, formal procedures (e.g., Falk, 1982; Gastil, 1993), but groups without pre-defined policies might arrive at only a partial consensus on whether they are, in fact, using consensus. After all, the establishment of procedures for many groups is itself an accomplishment, which requires ongoing negotiation and may never result in complete intersubjectivity (Schwartzman, 1989).

This study investigates relationships between group members' individual decision-making styles and the extent to which they perceive their group as making decisions by consensus. To provide a theoretical backdrop for the present study, we review relevant research on individual and group decision making, beginning with Scott and Bruce's (1995) work on individual decision-making styles. One particularly germane line of...