Page 84 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

The Small Group as a System 67

groups. Church committees such as the finance committee, building committee, and
worship committee had to work with the board for things to go smoothly. Third, mem-
bers must negotiate their autonomy and jurisdiction. For example, the church’s wor-
ship committee wanted to make substantial changes in the order of service and the
elements included in the service. But it had to negotiate with the board to determine
to what extent the committee had the authority to make changes and how to manage
those changes in the least disruptive way. Fourth, groups must make sense of their
relationships with other groups. Members have perceptions of other people and
groups within an organization, and these perceptions may shift over time. For exam-
ple, one campus department, generally perceived as uncooperative and self-serving,
offered to give up a faculty position to another department that was short-staffed. The
second department, caught by surprise, had to rethink its perceptions of the first; in
subsequent interactions, these two departments began to form alliances and coalitions
that would once have been unthinkable.
The bona fide group perspective is consistent with systems theory in its focus on
the relationship between a group and its environment. This is an important advantage
because most groups are part of a larger organizational structure and must interact
with individuals and other groups within that structure. Interestingly, for groups deal-
ing with complex tasks in a very uncertain environment, how often members commu-
nicate within the group is not as important to their performance as is how often they
22
interact with others outside the group. This demonstrates how important it is for
groups to match their internal abilities to process information with the external infor-
mational demands of the environment they are embedded in. Even nonorganizational
groups are also part of an environment. For instance, the environment of a family may
be the neighborhood or the region in which it lives.
The bona fide group perspective’s most recognized contribution is its focus on the
embeddedness of smaller groups in larger systems and recognizing that those bound-
aries are not only permeable but fluid. Identifying a group then is not as straightfor-
23
ward as traditional definitions of group would lead us to believe. Complicating matters
is the reality that many of these smaller groups use computer technology to do their
business and interact with their environment. The use of these technologies has
prompted even bona fide group theorists to take a second look at this ever complicated
relationship between a group and its environment. 24

Bona Fide Virtual Groups
We began to speculate in previous chapters about how group processes may change in
groups whose members do not meet face-to-face. The reality of our global world is
that many companies that might not otherwise ever collaborate on tasks now do so
with the help of technology that allows the members of multiple groups to interact
with each other without being on the same site. This represents the virtual end of the
face-to-face/virtual continuum described in Chapter 1. For instance, the Boeing
767 airplane is the result of collaboration among Boeing engineers, who designed the
fuel and cockpit; Aeritalia SAI engineers, who developed the fins and rudder; and
multiple Japanese firms, whose responsibility was the main body of the plane. 25

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