Paper

Essay: Groupthink in Corporate America

Name

Institutional Affiliation

Essay: Groupthink in Corporate America

Groupthink is one of the major problems that prevent timely and effective decision-making in the American business environment. In my effort to explore this problem, I conceptualized a research topic for this study as Groupthink in Corporate America. The study was driven by the desire to understand the state of paralysis that sweeps over organizational boardrooms or business units. These problems generate adverse impacts on an organization, especially in situations in which a company is in a major crisis and needs timely intervention. For example, an organization that is facing processes such as possible litigations, restructurings, and crises may be crippled by the groupthink bottlenecks in corporate decision-making (Silver, 2013, p. 78). Thus, groupthink is one of the challenges that deter generation of independent ideas, making the spread of knowledge and innovation harder (DeMers, 2018, p. 1). Groupthink is a major threat to an organization’s sustainability ate very business level. This problem is partly magnified by the communication progression that characterized the 21st century.

There are various reasons why there further research is needed in the area of groupthink in American organizations. First, the study seeks to explore the main aspects of groupthink syndromes that affect most American companies. The core symptoms of groupthink can be categorized into three major elements: overestimations of the power of morality of the group, closed-mindedness, as well as pressures towards uniformity. The study will examine the extent to which these three categories of groupthink are dominant in the American corporate society. These research objectives are founded on the idea that groups that have fallen prey to these syndromes tend to believe that it is better, and more powerful to have unquestioning faith in its own moral authorities (Chen, Tsai & Shu, 2009, p. 138). This study will also be efficacious in exploring warnings from external members and how firms tend to underestimate the competence and strengths of relevant outgroups with which they are competing. There exists a paucity of knowledge associated with within-group consensus in groupthink literature (Hassan, 2013, p. 226). Therefore, the study will examine how people who differ with the dominant group’s position fail to voice their concern. Of specific interest in this area will include exploration of the ways in which groups often pile pressure on members ho deviate from the group’s position.

The research will be conducted in the United States. To this effect, employees and company leaders of three major multinational companies will be selected for data gathering. The participants will be selected through a process of stratified random sampling in order to increase representativeness of the sample. The reason for selecting this sampling group is that they are relevant to the research questions and topic under investigation since they operate within the active corporate environment. Thus, some of the dominant questions that they will be asked will include the decision-making process in high-level policy groups. More precisely, the research will assisted major causes of policy failures in organizations. For instance, the data gathered from this sample will help to answer the questions of why groupthink brings about errors in decision-making. Part of this study will explore the tendency for firms to have premature and extreme concurrence seeking behaviors among group members.

There are various areas in groupthink research that I feel many studies have fallen short. For instance, not much has been explored about the groupthink dynamics in project teams and their impacts on performance (Reaves, 2018, p. 15). In addition, there are gaps in research in areas such as determining whether or not team members have the capability to detect groupthink climates in organizations or not. Teams that go through groupthink on their daily experiences may not understand how it is really a problem.

References

Chen, C. K., Tsai, C. H., & Shu, K. C. (2009). An exploratory study for groupthink research to enhance group decision quality. Journal of Quality, 16(2), 137-152.