Teamthink: beyond the groupthink syndrome in self‐managing work teams

Self‐managing teams have been credited with many positive payoffs. These include increased quality, productivity, employee quality of work life, and decreases in absenteeism and turnover. Significant attention has been devoted to the actual benefits derived from these group applications. What is typically lacking is exploration of the road‐blocks to self‐managed team success. Examines an important challenge to SMT success – the threats that groups face when making decisions. Notable evidence indicates that cohesive groups (such as self‐managing teams) tend to create internal pressures towards conformity that interfere with constructive critical analysis and ultimately lead to dysfunctional decisions. The term groupthink has been coined for this process that threatens effective group decision making. Addresses this challenge in some detail. In particular, proposes a new effective group condition – teamthink – a group decision‐making process that enables groups to make effective decisions while avoiding the pitfalls of groupthink.