Understanding and facilitating group problem structuring and formulation: Mental representations, interaction, and representation aids

Abstract

Many issues facing the organizations of today are complex and ill-structured. The complexity of these issues do not lend themselves to structuring and formulation by quantitative models, nor simple intuitive problem solving. Rather, making sense of these situations necessitates considering and oftentimes negotiating alternative models of the ill-structured situation. The use of groups is one way to gain access to alternative perspectives. In this paper, we argue that individual mental representations are the underlying basis of group interaction and communication. And, that these internal representations can be formalized in external representations that may be useful to facilitate interaction and communication as a group strives to create a shared problem perspective. Based on this theoretical foundation, we explored these ideas by examining small groups using representational aids during the process of structuring and formulating a problem. While descriptive in nature, this study provides insights on the successful use of representational aids and suggests that these aids can positively impact problem structuring and formulation by facilitating the sharing of alternative perspectives.