Advantages and disadvantages of group decision-making (PDF)

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Sociology - Individual, Groups, Society, grade: 1.1, Central Queensland University, course: Creative Arts Administration, language: English, abstract: Group decision-making is a process where an assembly of people convene to analyse problems or situations, evaluate alternative actions and reach solutions. Decisions may concern the judgement of a particular course of action, how best to solve a problem or the determination of the direction or magnitude of work ahead performed by teams or individuals. Deciding the best course of action can range in perplexity, depending on the effectiveness of how that group functions, the quality of alternatives that are generated, the amount of access to correct and adequate information and their understanding of the problem.

Where time is of the essence and also befits the personification of money, it is customary for a business or organisation to engage in Group Decision-Making processes in the attempt to effectively and efficiently solve problems. Though some methods are more time-consuming some others. The group leader usually reserves judgement on which method is used in the Group Decision-Making process, because if one assembled a group to make a decision on what method should be used, what method would one use to decide? And so on one would ramble in an infinite loop. And if the group ever assembled without a leader, who's idea was it for the group to assemble in the first instance? So the first advantage or disadvantage of a group decision would be how effective its leader is in managing the process, which can either be a solution in itself or it can be a problem. Though the greatest problem of all seems to be time.