Ambiguity and Communication Effects on Small Group Decision-Making Performance

Abstract

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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“…Second, our findings speak to the idea that team role differentiation primarily occurs through interaction among team members (Hare, 1994;Salazar, 1996). Our results suggest the informal structure and role differentiation created in these teams were based on team member interaction.…”

Experimental evaluation of executive skills in an EU country

“…Further information related to this skill can be found in Day and Silverman (1989), Hackman (1998), Jacobs and Washington (2003), Mankin (2001), Salazar (1996), and Sundstrom (1998).…”

“…Further information related to this skill can be found in Barrick and Mount (1991), Bedeian and Breeze (1998), Hirokawa (1990), Park andKwon (2004), andSalazar (1996).…”

Understanding the Communicative and Social Processes of Engineering Ethics in Diverse Design Teams

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