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MGT602
Decision Analytics
Owen Seamons
[email protected]
3/20/2023
Welcome Module Three of MGT 602
Module Three Covers:
• Differences between an
individual’s decisions and group
-based decisions
• Ways of working: groups versus
teams
• Understanding group dynamics
• Ways of dealing with groups,
teams in decision making
• Overcoming problems with
group-based decision making
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• Compare, contrast and critically evaluate
sources of data as influences in traditional
and virtual team decision making
structures
• Compare and critically evaluate sources of
data as influences for decision making in a
range of business contexts
• Examine and evaluate decision-making
systems and techniques which engage
groups in their decision making
• Analyse how these systems, processes can
enhance sustainable outcomes, explain
organisational change and interventions
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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Introduction
• Western society generally places greater value on the individual over the
group. In reality, we are more likely to make decisions in groups.
• Recent research has found groups often fail to make good quality
decisions. Much flawed decision making by groups can be explained
through failure of group members to engage with others.
Decisions made by groups can be less reliable than those made by
individuals for several reasons, including:
• Group related information processing biases; overly restrictive
leadership; errors in group members’ communications; group
polarisation; social loafing, or combinations of these errors, biases
• A major challenge in group-based decision making can be attributed to
‘groupthink’ 4
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Forming Teams for Assignment Two, due week 8
• By the end of week five (5), students will need to have
established who are their fellow team members
(minimum 3 Required), where they are situated, and an
agreed means of communicating virtually with one
another.
• Thought will need to be given to constructing an
information management base to house data made
available and around which your team’s decisions,
conclusions, recommendations and justifications can be
made, assignment two written up and submitted.
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Oral Team Presentation
• All teams will need to prepare a short oral
presentation in week 7 or 8
• Each team member to present
• Purpose is to get feedback from the class on your
report at that stage
• I will select which teams will present on the day
• Team can supply up to 5 PowerPoint slides to explain
their report
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Thinking About Forming a Team
• Identify differences in decision style and personality type between team
members in advance of forming up the team
• Review established theories, accepted practices relating to group dynamics
and group processes.
• Consider the challenges of working in virtual teams and identify ways in which
your team can best communicate.
• Take account of team members’ individual differences in decision
preferences, personalities, styles when establishing rules.
• Reflect on how you worked with your fellow virtual team members by
establishing Team Rules and members’ roles.
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Some Differences Between a Team and a Group

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Your Team Position
• List 3 things that you will contribute to your
team
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Who am I?
• Write 3 truths and 1 lie
about yourself.
• You will then read them
out in any order you wish
• We have to guess which
is truth and which is lie
and why.
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Common Thread
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Group-based Decision Challenges
Decisions made by groups can be less reliable than those made by
individuals for several reasons:
• Group related information processing biases;
• Overly restrictive leadership;
• Errors in group members’ communications;
• Group polarisation;
• Social loafing;
• Failure to voice dissent in efforts to protect reputations;
• Combinations of these errors, biases, or wilful behaviour
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Social Disruption and Group Decisions
• Advances in digital technology have brought about large scale
social disruption
• Organisations striving to provide faster, more efficient
operations have moved to networked structures
• Rather than working face-to-face networked team members
work separately, connected by technology
• Virtual team membership offers high speed communication
through advanced technology but often low levels of psychosocial interaction
• Facilitating virtual team members’ engagement and decision
processes is a major 21st century challenge for managers
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Team Exercise
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Individual Versus Group Decisions
• This far, we have considered individual level decision making
• Need to look into group-based decision making and factors
contributing to errors, flawed decisions
• Theory has it that (through group diversity), innovative
decision making is best left to groups, over individuals
• Groups capable of ‘groupthink’ type decisions where an
unquestioning attitude is supported by the group’s need to
maintain harmony
• Need for managers to hold a sound understanding of group
process, group relations, and the dynamics of group-based
decision making
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Concepts
• Availability Heuristic
– The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on
immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind
when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or
decision. https://youtu.be/vb083Unh7ck
• Cognitive Ease
– Cognitive ease or fluency is the measure of how easy it is
for our brains to process information. The Cognitive ease
associated with something will alter how we feel about it
and whether we are motivated to invest our time and
effort in it.
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Groupthink
• “Groupthink” is the term most often applied to the
tendency of groups to go astray.
https://youtu.be/CWEvJciU0Zc*
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Discussion on Individuals versus Groups
• Greater value placed on individual over groups?
• View the video exploring differences between individual
level and group-based decision making.
https://youtu.be/twnUTtjq5hY
• https://youtu.be/m9La78lZT_A **
• Discuss the following:
• What are the essential differences between individuals
and groups in their information processing.
• Differences between small groups (2-10)and large groups
(15-25) in their likely communication, work performances
• Identify, describe the effects of task differences on
individual, and on group performance
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Learning Activity 3.6: Strengths and Weaknesses
• Identify and Describe the essential strengths of group-based
decision making, the essential weaknesses
• What importance would you place on the definition and
clarification of roles in group formation and decision making?
• How should the manager address the sometimes-competing
needs of individual team members, the team’s needs and the
needs of the task on decision making quality?
• How might the manager address the competing challenges of
social isolation among team members and drive for
conformity in team decision making?
• What is a ‘devil’s advocate’? How can the role be established
and what would you expect to come out of the devil’s
advocate role in your team’s functioning?
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Making Better Decisions In Groups
Do groups make better decisions than
individuals?
• Yes. When groups have diversity of thinking and
beliefs…and
• All are listened to…and
• There is independence in thinking…and
• The status quo is challenged…and
• There are checks and balances
• Unconscious bias is monitored
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Making Decisions In Groups
View and discuss the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptOhoizsHaw
See full article: Bang,D. & Frith, C. (2017). Making better decisions in groups.
Royal Society Open Science. Retrieved from
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170193).
• Describe some different social aspects of individuals working in team
settings
• Identify and describe the key steps to follow in a group to deliver high
quality decisions
• How might the steps identified minimise groupthink and minimise bias?
• How might group members be engaged to ensure equal contribution by all
to the group ? 22
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Groups versus Teams
• Groups-teams; terms are often used interchangeably
• Teams’ strengths depends on team members:
Commonality of purpose, connections between
members, degree of team member empowerment
• Teams can have extended power and be autonomous
or semi- autonomous in their decision making, setting
own direction.
• Group members’ direction guided by designated
organisation members. Decision making in the group
function of designated leader or organisation member
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Some Differences Between a Team and a Group

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Virtual Teams
• Virtual team members need to be empowered to operate
independently and sufficiently skilled to operate individually and
as a member of the virtual team. All members become
responsible for one another!
• View Video (Buchanan, 2015) on teams versus groups:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG-FLOi4OOU **
Review Murray, Poole and Jones (2006). Chapter 12 on high performing teams.
Discuss the following:
1. What are the key differences between working in a group and in a team?
2. Do you work in a team or a group? Explain.
3. What do you believe are the qualities a high performing team?
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Working with Virtual Teams
• Virtual team members, working across sometimes vast
distances, joined by technology, in physical isolation and
dealing with high speed communication but low levels of
psycho-social interaction with others.
• Changes in organisation structuring, work processes have
led to an increase in the number of virtual teams in
operation around the globe.
• Movement from across the desk to across the world
communication has led to a single dimensional view of the
world and potential for high levels of stress.
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Managers and Virtual Teams
• Managing virtual teams demands changes from an
‘across the desk’ mindset to one of adopting a new
form of coaching and communicating; away from the
traditional lead, direct and control approaches.
• Important to build sound communication processes
and meet team members’ psycho-social needs at work.
View and discuss video on ways of working efficiently,
virtually: Identify own workplace relevance of efficiencies
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DVFTWXCsII
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Challenges of Managing Remote Teams
View and discuss the video on working with remote teams.
https://youtu.be/YZkcUPWIrMg **
1. Identify and describe some of the daily challenges facing
virtual teams in their remote decision making work
2. How can virtual team communication be best managed across
a physically separate team membership?
3. How can virtual team members’ psycho social health and well
being be catered for by the teams’ overall manager ?
4. What other challenges are there with remote teams?
https://youtu.be/MYFR9vysLP4 28 ***
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Class Discussion on Assessment Two
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Group Team Dynamics
• Important for managers to understand the different phases of a
group/team’s growth, operation and development and operating as a
unit in effective processing of information and decision making.
• Group dynamics: The mutual understanding on one another’s’ roles and
related behaviours when operating together as a unit.
• This understanding can help explain group/team’s functioning and
assist in managers fostering positive working relationships across the
unit
• Groups /teams operating in an environment offering certainty of role
and function while operating in a psychologically safe space can more
readily provide high quality information processing, decision making.
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Tuckman Model
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Developing a Positive Team
• Team members operating in a positive environment hold
each other responsible for task completion and team
functioning.
• Important to establish an environment offering
psychological safety and certainty of role.
• Develop an open mindset, encourage active listening and
questioning of decisions free of criticism.
• View video on group development (HumberEDU,2015):
https://youtu.be/2QbXc6E08H4 32 ** Tuckman Model
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Readings –Discussion on Team Success
Read Klug and Bagrow (2016) paper on gaining success in teams.
Is it something to do with members’ age or size of team or social
loafing? Or none of these things?
http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/160007
Read Marshall and Begeman (2005). Necessary but not sufficient
Paper discusses causes of team success.
Is success more to do with technical smarts, or is it something else?
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Review and Discussion
• Review the readings and videos on groups and teams
covered so far. Use this material to inform your responses
to the following questions:
1. What are the phases of group development?
2. What are the implications of these phases for managers
3. How might the manager deal with emerging conflict,
potential problems with communication between team
members and teams?
4. Outline the role of the manager in the team’s formation,
operations development
5. Does the team’s ready availability of technical skills
guarantee team success?
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Challenges in Group Decision Making (1)
• More recently, groups have been found to offer the potential
for superiority over individuals in decision making.
• Groups have however, been found on many occasions to be
limited in their decision making due to committing a wide
array of errors and to be biased in their judgements
• Attempts at conformity, or retaining harmony in group
relations can lead to flawed decisions or groupthink
• Inherent biases in groups’ functioning can include ‘estimation
bias’. Here group members underestimate the time needed to
complete a project (constant need for re-estimation)
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Challenges in Group Decision Making (2)*
• Information signal errors
• Reputational errors
• Amplifying errors
• Cascading effects
• Polarised thinking
• ‘Everybody knows that”
• Groupthink
View the video: Flight (2016):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNq_l8mlv1Y
* Sunstein & Hastie (2014). Making dumb groups smarter. HBR
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Review and Discussion
View the video on group decision making:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIfoIkJzlxU
Use the resources provided to address the following:
1. How might managers address the competing challenges of
need for conformity v social isolation in groups?
2. Describe the essential strengths and weaknesses of groupbased over individual decision making
3. What level of importance would you assign to the defining and
clarifying of individual roles in group formation?
4. How should the manager address the sometimes competing
needs of the individual, the group and the task?
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Learning Activity 3.7: Overcoming problems
• Identify the problems facing groups making decisions and describe some
possible ways of overcoming these problems
• How might self-silencing be overcome and ensure full member
contribution to group decision making?
• Describe the likely outcomes of Groupthink in decisions making in groups.
How might the problem of groupthink be best addressed?
• Describe the implication of informational signals and reputational
pressures on groups making decisions. How might these challenges be
addressed by the manger working in decision making environment?
• How might group polarisation effect and cascading of information effect
be overcome and group-based decision quality be improved?
• How can the manager take account of, and improve on the inherent under
estimating by team members of time requirements for project
completion?
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Overcoming Errors in Group Decision Making
• Evidence of groups being more deliberative in their decision
making found to overcome many errors in information processing
• Groups have been found to be better than individuals in
correcting for ego centric bias.
• Group leaders who encourage information disclosure can reduce
self silencing
• Assigning roles to individuals in group formation can reduce
uncertainty, address reputational risk and bring error rates down
• Creation of a ‘devil’s advocate’ role in a group can be useful in
opposing conformity in information handling.
• Bringing diversity to groups functioning can, through creative
tension bring new, innovative approaches to play. 39
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Six strategies for overcoming group-based challenges include:
1. Identify groups’ problems. Implement relevant solutions.
2. Determine ways of overcoming self silencing in the group.
3. Bring diversity, devil’s advocacy to bear on groupthink
4. Identify, act on problems of informational signals, conformity,
reputational pressure at work in the group
5. Determine how group polarisation effect, cascading of
information can be overcome and decisions improved.
6. Determine ways of overcoming underestimating effect
Addressing Challenges in Group
Functioning
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