How Does Groupthink Affect Decision Making in an Organasation?

Colman( 2001) in a dictionary of psychology defines groupthink as” a cumulative pattern of protective avoidance, characteristic of a group decision making in organisations in which group members develop rationalisations in supporting impressions of their own infallibility and invulnerability within the organisation. “p. 318. It involves that there is more of concurrence than crucial thinking when making decisions in an organisation. This short article will go over how groupthink can impact decision making in an organisation such as school, political celebration and airtel (Business Company).

Groupthink can cause bad performance or even failure to achieve the organisations objectives. Its propensity of seeking concurrence can for example make an incorrect choice triumph (Shepherd, 1964). For example, a cafeteria committee can alter the provider of food packs. If the group does not objectively consider the choice might wind up selecting bad food stuffs that might be unhealthy to the trainees. Coon and Mitterer (2007) state that the urge to make such decisions might develop from the requirement to preserve others approval even at the expense of important thinking.

Members of a group converge their viewpoints without objective analysis (Brown, 1965). This results in no assessments as external groups are viewed as opponents. They likewise feel to be foolproof. A failed system is thus likely to emerge due to groupthink. For example, airtel presented some irrelevant airtime packages which they needed to reverse after some time since they found that they made 2 identical bundles. In a school as an organization, a possible example of how groupthink can impact choice making is that some students in class might yield to groupthink.

Teachers have to note the enormous ability of students to influence others in decisions. Through groupthink learners might agree on a wrong decision or force others to agree (Gage, 1995). Learners may thus fail to grasp the intended learning outcomes. Groupthink also affects decision making in organisations in the way that solutions that are initially presented by most members are never re-examined to seek out less obvious shortfalls and strengths. They even fail examine those original points that were supported by the majority.

This leads to decisions that result in costly mistakes. For example, there could be an element of groupthink in primary schools who force learners to pay money to access the free primary education. The teachers claim that the money is for the salary for watchmen among other claims, yet it is clear that that is the duty of government. The results in such primary schools has been increased abscondment let alone drop outs. Similarly, some primary school committees have decided to compel learners to be fetching firewood for the as School Feeding Programme.

This costs students time and the rationality of the decision is questionable. The other way in which groupthink affects decision making in organisation is that decisions are centre around the control of one person usually a leader who protects the group from adverse information that might undermine the existing complacency. Direct pressure is also mounted on any member who might hold dissenting views on consensus opinion (Colman, 2001; Weiten, 2007).

This automatically rules out comfortable participation from members there by compromising the credibility of an rganisation’s decisions. This in turn blocks communication flow which is vital in any organisation. For example, in Political Parties such tendencies lead to divisions manifested in emergency of mutinies such as that of United Democrat Front earlier this year when others went on with the Convention while other shunned it. In conclusion, groups are supposedly thought to have high likelihood of making brilliant decisions yet this is not always the case (Cartwright and Zander, 1968 cited in Levine and Moreland, 1995).

It has been found that groupthink can affect the decision making in organisations that lead to poor decisions. Costy mistakes are made, objectives are not effectively achieved and groups fail to change a failing policy. Whyte (1989) points out that the wish for unanimity overrides members motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. Thus, it can be argued generally that the effect of groupthink in organisation decision making is that it declines the quality of decisions tha t compromise the ambitions, efficiency and productivity of an organisation.