A Model of Group Decision-making Process: Research on the Impacts of Group Leadership and Group Conflicts

摘要

Recent research showed more concerns on group or team decision-making process. Group conflict is an important variance during the process of group decision making. Conflict was thought to be harmful to organization for many years. But recent research demonstrated that certain conflict is constructive. Jehn (1995) studied the difference between task conflict and relationship conflict and found that task conflict is positively related with group performance and relationship conflict is negatively related with group performance. A series of followed studies supported the conclusion. Then, how to manage conflicts in the group? Answers may be found in group leadership. In a natural group or management team, there must be a designated formal leader who has final decision making right and should be responsible for the group. The power and status of the leader make him/her a key role in managing group conflicts. According to contingency theory, a leader should adapt his behavior to group task, group composition and other situational factors. Appropriate leadership behaviors keep reasonable task conflict and control emotional conflict during group decision making process, which further improve decision quality and group members' acceptance to final decision. The paper set up a conception model to explain the team decision making process. Propositions were put forward to explain the relationship among group conflicts, group leadership, decision quality, group member acceptance during group decision making process.