Agreeing to fail

Abstract

Does 'groupthink' cause management disasters, or are other factors at play? In the book espousing the value of getting people to put their collective heads together, 'The Wisdom of Crowds', writer James Surowiecki argued that small teams had to be on their guard. Janis argued that when decision makers are too much alike in worldview and mind-set they easily fall prey to groupthink. Janis's work in the 1970s was based on a series of poor foreign-policy decisions made by the US government that included the events leading up to the attack by Japanese forces on Pearl Harbour and the disastrous attempt to invade Cuba from the Bay of Pigs.