This article presents a critique of current conceptualizations of roles and their development and evolution in the small group. An alternative model is presented, one that is grounded in a structuration perspective and conceives of "role" as social practice. Roles are seen as being produced and reproduced in interaction. Such a conceptualization is helpful in ascertaining the dynamic nature of roles in the small group. Implications for small group research are presented.

This article provides a review of the literature on the relationship between small group process and what Steiner and Collins & Guetzkow have termed, respectively, process loss and the assembly effect bonus. These models make contradictory predictions about the influence of communication variables on group decision-making performance. The extant research on group decision making has supported the validity of both models. The amount of ambiguity present in the decision-making situation is posited as a factor giving rise to instances of process gain and loss. Ambiguity is incorporated into a revised version of the path-goal model of group performance. The model outlines the types of influences that group interaction may have in a group's arriving at a process gain or loss.

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The literature that has characterized thejield ofgroup studies has ken conhDversia1 and confusing w'th regard to the effect of communicative and nonwmmunicative variables on p u p decision making. The mazrch reported here &further understanding ofthe mmunicatin-pnfannre relationshy. It is postulated that two claws ofuarinbles (homogeneity and task) moderate the relationship between p u p communication and group pe@munce. This is bemuse the variables contribute to the overall ambiguityfiund in the decision-making situation. The ambiguity model is aduanced in an e j b t to reconcile the contmdictoyjindings, where they exist, and to propose new hypotheses regarding the wmmunication-pup perjinmaance relationshy.t is a fact that a substantial part of our lives will be spent making decisions in small groups. From a family discussing which video Abran I. Salazar (Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1991) is assistant professor i n the Department of Speech Communication at Texas A&M University. A version of this article was presented at the 1993 joint meeting of the Central/Southern States Communication Associations, Lexington, KY. The author thanks Randy Hirokawa, Sam Becker, and Richard Street for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This manuscript is based on the author's doctoral dissertation (December 1991).

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