Majority Decision-Making Works Best Under Conditions of Leadership Ambiguity and Shared Task Representations.

Michaéla C Schippers,Diana C Rus

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519295

Michaéla C Schippers, Diana C Rus

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519295

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Abstract

The effectiveness of decision-making teams depends largely on their ability to integrate and make sense of information. Consequently, teams which more often use majority decision-making may make better quality decisions, but particularly so when they also have task representations which emphasize the elaboration of information relevant to the decision, in the absence of clear leadership. In the present study we propose that (a) majority decision-making will be more effective when task representations are shared, and that (b) this positive effect will be more pronounced when leadership ambiguity (i.e., team members’ perceptions of the absence of a clear leader) is high. These hypotheses were put to the test using a sample comprising 81 teams competing in a complex business simulation for seven weeks. As predicted, majority decision-making was more effective when task representations were shared, and this positive effect was more pronounced when there was leadership ambiguity. The findings extend and nuance earlier research on decision rules, the role of shared task representations, and leadership clarity.

Highlights

“When exploring the Northwest Territory in 1805, Captain Clark used the majority rule to decide where to set his winter camp (Ambrose, 1996; Moulton, 2003)
Since the performance of teams using a majority rule will largely hinge on whether uniquely distributed information will surface and be integrated into the final decisions, we argue that the extent to which they have developed shared task representations may either facilitate or hinder team performance
Our theory and measurement were aimed at the team level of analysis, with the dependent variable of interest being a team-level variable, namely team performance expressed as Return on Investment (ROI)

Summary

Introduction

“When exploring the Northwest Territory in 1805, Captain Clark used the majority rule to decide where to set his winter camp (Ambrose, 1996; Moulton, 2003). Numerous studies have shown that groups often fail to exchange information (cf Gruenfeld et al, 1996; Wittenbaum and Stasser, 1996; Wittenbaum et al, 2004), and even if they do, they often do not elaborate on and integrate this information into their final decisions (Gigone and Hastie, 1993; for a meta-analysis see Mesmer-Magnus and DeChurch, 2009; for reviews see van Ginkel and van Knippenberg, 2012; Schippers et al, 2014) This failure to discuss and integrate information, may be compounded in teams using a majority rule. We expect that for teams favoring a majority rule, high (vs low) levels of shared task representations will be positively (vs negatively) associated with team performance Another factor that may facilitate or hinder the extent to which team members exchange and process information is the extent to which there is clarity about who is responsible for leadership in the team. We argue that leadership ambiguity will amplify the positive (vs. negative) effects of shared task representations on team performance under conditions of high majority decision-making

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