Emergent Issues in Human Decision Making - Hardcover

Phillips, Gerald M.; Wood, Julia T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809311518 ISBN 13: 9780809311514

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984

Synopsis

A critical examination of the concept of decision making or consensus that has held sway in thinking about groups since its introduction in the 1930s. As a part of the group dynamics movement, the con­cept of consensus was accepted perhaps without adequate reflection regarding its nature and utility as a way of thinking about and teaching about group process.

 

The authors carefully define the con­cept, trace it historically, and critically evaluate its merit to create an under­standing of what happens when groups of people come together to work things out. The contributors are William K. Rawlins, Randy Y. Hirokawa, Nancy Wyatt, Lynne Kelly, Cynthia F. Begnal, Christopher Waagen, Susan L. Kline, Janet M. Ceropski, and Paul G. Friedman.

 

The result of their studies is the recog­nition that consensus is a concept, not an entity or a state of being. While an important concept that is useful as a critical tool, it must be treated as a con­cept?an abstraction created and used by those who wish to study how people reach collective agreements.

About this title

About the Author

Gerald M. Phillips is Professor of Speech Communication, Pennsylvania State University, and author of Commu­nicating in Organizations.

 

Julia T. Wood is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at the Univer­sity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of Human Communication.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1984
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809311518
• ISBN 13: 9780809311514
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 181
• Editor: Phillips Gerald M.