The Dynamics of Intense Work Groups: A Study of British String Quartets

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Portions of this paper were written while the first author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We are grateful for the financial support provided by the National Science Foundation (#BNS87-00864 and SES88-15566), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Research Board of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois. This study was conducted while the first author was a visiting professor of Business Studies at Warwick University. We sincerely thank Andrew Pettigrew and Cynthia Hardy for encouragement, support, and direction; Guillermo Perich for music school contacts; Anne Copay, Gina Gargano, and Stephan Ahadi for research assistance; Max Bazerman, Cynthia Hardy, Greg Oldham, Bob Sutton, and three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments; and Dick Boland and Linda Pike for their invaluable stimulation of our ideas. This paper focuses on the relationship between the internal dynamics and success of a population of intense work groups, professional string quartets in Great Britain. We observed three basic paradoxes: leadership versus democracy, the paradox of the second violinist, and confrontation versus compromise. The central findings indicate that the more successful quartets recognized but did not openly discuss the paradoxes. Instead, they managed these inherent contradictions implicitly and did not try to resolve them. The discussion addresses the study of intense work groups, the forces that drive these paradoxes, and potential applications to other organizational groups.'