Collective efficacy has become a prominent feature in educational policy and practice with growing evidence that a strong sense of collective efficacy amongst educators leads to better outcomes for students. With growing interest in the importance of collective efficacy and how to cultivate it, the Collective Efficacy Tracking Tool was created to…

Knowledge specialization, such as that present in cross-functional teams, produces both positive and negative outcomes. Our research investigated how unique expertise can lead to feelings of ostracism in the form of being out of the loop. Compared to group members with shared expertise, members with unique expertise felt out of the loop and…

The rhetoric of partnership is ubiquitous in the current policy context. In education, partnerships take a number of forms among which is "interorganisational collaboration" (IOC), defined as a partnership between institutions/organisations aimed at developing synergistic solutions to complex problems. But policy has a tendency to…

Focusing on five models of committee effectiveness for purposes of this assessment will lend insight into the strengths and weaknesses of utilizing a structured action plan as a guide to achieving and maintaining optimum committee effectiveness in higher education. In the compilation of the strengths and weaknesses of committee decision making,…

This paper focuses on the parameters of a semester-long project called the "Do Good" project, geared towards developing small group communication skills in undergraduate students. This project highlights participation in a social engagement project that allows students to bridge concepts learned in small group communication lectures…

This research examined the decisions that highly experienced outdoor leaders made on backpacking expeditions conducted by a tertiary institution in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. The purpose of the research was to document decision problems and explore them as Recognition-Primed Decisions (RPD) within naturalistic decision making (NDM)…

This case tells the story of a failed public-private partnership. It illustrates how stakeholders, encouraged by the current political context, rushed into a partnership without establishing a basis for mutual understanding and expectations. As a result of this hasty arrangement, questions emerged over who ultimately controlled decisions related…

The purpose of this study was to study Organizational Behavior of Colleges of Education of Maharashtra state in India. Organizational behavior was studied at three process level i.e. individual process level, team process level and organizational process level. The differences were found out if any, in the Organizational Behavior, in between the…

The purpose of this study was to describe and determine the prevalence of decision-making characteristics of recreational backcountry groups when making a decision of where to travel and ride in avalanche terrain from the perspective of individuals. Decision-making characteristics encompassed communication, decision-making processes, leadership,…

This article proposes a pedagogical framework to help students analyze their group and team interactions. Intersecting five fundamental group attributes (group size, group goal, group member interdependence, group structure, and group identity) with three overarching group processes (leadership, decision making, and conflict management) creates an…

Human Communication in Organizations (HCO) is an introductory college course at Ithaca College, typically taken in the freshman year, in which students from a wide variety of majors examine the basic concepts, issues, and uses of organizational communication including communication theory, superior-subordinate and peer relationships, leadership,…

Studies on individual and group problem solving from the past 15 years are brought together in this volume. Four sections of the book consider individual problem solving and the search for a possible unique factor in creativity. The next four sections concern themselves with the various aspects of group problem solving, and a final part of the…

Discusses a stairway model of committee structures and effects as it relates to consensus and change. Proposes the model as a useful device for post-mortum analysis of committee behavior as well as a way to organize committees to achieve desired goals. (RL)

Drawing from data generated in more than 100 hours of interaction within 15 leaderless groups, a study investigated the interaction characteristics of emergent leadership--leadership that is earned through face-to-face encounters in a group. Each group was instructed to reach consensus decisions on two tasks, both of which provided the possibility…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of varying leader selection systems on the performance of political decision-making groups (judges). The type of leadership choice of the court was the independent variable and degree of dissent the dependent variable. As predicted, merit choice had less dissent. (NG)