Dennis Gouran Communication in Groups

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Dennis GouranCommunication in Groups

• The Emergence and Evolution of a Field of Study

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1914-1920s

• Pedagogical concerns about how to prepare
  students for effective performance in
  decision-making and problem-solving groups
  animated early interests in group communication
  by speech scholars.
• Group discussion pedagogy was often justified as
  preparing students for participation in public
  life and democracy.
• Theory--when it came to such pedagogy--was drawn
  from John Deweys philosophical account of
  reflective thinking (How We Think 1910).

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1930s-1940s

• Speech scholars began to realize the need for
  more sophisticated theories in the 1930s (e.g.,
  regarding disruptive group members and effective
  use of rational procedures).
• However, little research by speech scholars was
  directed toward the subject of group
  communication before 1950.
• After that time, effective task performance by
  groups was significantly represented in research
  studies.
• But major advances in communication inquiry were
  increasingly concerned with the role of
  relational communication in groups.

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1950s

• Early research on group communication explored
  questions related to effectiveness of individual
  and group decision-making. Topics included
• effects on decision-making of critical thinking
  ability
• utility of meeting agendas
• group-members personalities
• competition and cooperation
• self-concept and group-member performance
• effects of cooperative thinking in groups

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1950s

• Research in this decade, says Gouran,
  contributed to the view that characteristics of
  members and groups have an important bearing on
  their performance. Mastery of discussion methods
  alone was insufficient to ensure that groups,
  especially task-oriented ones, would function
  effectively (8).

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1960s

• Research in this decade attended chiefly to
  functional and developmental perspectives on
  group communication.

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1960s

• The functional perspective explored how such
  variables as members abilities and styles of
  behavior--including communicative behavior--as
  well as groups satisfaction of task requirements
  to the outcomes that members and groups achieve
  (9).
• This perspective presumed a linear process of
  task-related communication.
•  It also presupposed that the most effective way
  to make decisions and solve problems was to
  follow a sequence based on Dewey (1910) as
  adapted to group tasks definition of problem,
  analysis of the problem, proposing possible
  solutions, testing solutions against criteria,
  and selecting or constructing a solution
  (Phillips 1966).

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1960s

• The developmental perspective attended to the
  content of group-member utterances and how the
  group interaction they create develops and
  defines the relationships among group members.
• Results in this perspective questioned findings
  about predictable phases of interaction
  sequences. In opposition to Bales and Strotbeck
  (1951), Scheidel and Crowell (1964, 1966) found
  that interactions do not unfold in linear
  developmental sequences.
• Other research found that themes in task-oriented
  group discussions reflected emerging group
  culture (Berg 1967) and that particular
  characteristics of discussion statements served
  to disrupt decision-making in groups (Leathers
  1969).
•  

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1960s

• According to Gouran, the major achievement of
  this decade was a unprecedented attention to
  what members say to one another, how the content
  of speech acts affects relationships among
  members, and what, in particular, such acts have
  to do with the outcomes that groups achieve
  (11).

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1970s

• This decade represented a diversification of
  topics, issues, and contexts of investigation,
  though without consensus on a theoretical
  framework to guide research.
• Despite the lack of consensus, Gouran believes
  that many studies were grounded in a Systems
  Perspective, in that they were concerned with the
  ways in which both the flow and characteristics
  of interaction were interrelated (11)

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1970s

• Task-oriented group communication was studied
  with a view toward improving performance.
• However, group communication in public (social or
  political) venues was less emphasized.
• Researchers recognized the importance of group
  communication in professional arenas, such as
  organizations.

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1970s

• Group interaction was studied in relation to
  numerous variables, not least in relation to the
  relation to leadership (emergence and impact).
• However there was increasing dissatisfaction with
  the lack of theory to guide and integrate
  inquiry, often concerning interaction in
  zero-history groups.

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1980s

• The 1980s saw a remarkable proliferation of
  theories related to group communication, some of
  which represented formalization of outlooks that
  had been significant in research for some time
  (15).
• Functional Theory concerned with explaining
  how interaction affects group outcomes--especially
  the quality of decision and effectiveness of
  solutions to problems.

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1980s

• Developmental Theory concerned with how group
  interaction unfolds and shapes itself over time.
  
• Structuration Theory shared some concerns
  addressed by Developmental theory. It differed,
  however, in its inclusion of internal factors
  (rules and resources) that shape and are shaped
  by patterns of group interaction, as well as its
  identification of structures as the generative
  mechanisms underlying interaction in groups.

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1980s

• Symbolic Convergence Theory concerned with
  processes of meaning construction that originate
  at the dyadic and group level and culminate--and
  even influence occurrences--at the
  organizational, institutional, and societal
  levels.
• Socio-Egocentric Theory predicts group
  decisions on the basis of prediscussion
  preferences of group members. This theory
  reflects skepticism that task-oriented
  communication in groups affects decisions made by
  the group.

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1990s

• Major changes in group communication research
  during the 1990s include the following.
• Reduction of attention to group decision-making
  and problem solving.
• Skepticism about the efficacy and technical
  characterization of communication in
  task-oriented groups 
• Skepticism about the relevance of rational models
  for explaining groups decision making.

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1990s

• Broadening research to include more types of
  groups.
• Bona Fide Groups perspective, which comprehends
  natural groups in their contexts (organizational,
  institutional, social), considers how multiple
  roles and role boundaries along with shifting
  borders and group membership influence the
  behavior of group members.
• Naturalistic Paradigm, which takes a
  quasi-cultural perspective on natural groups and
  employs qualitative empirical methods.