Organisations are increasingly dependent on teams to solve the complex problems challenging businesses today. A recent study shows that their faith in teamwork to solve complex business problems is the best approach.
In this study 760 students from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign solved two letters-to-numbers coding problems as individuals or as groups of two, three, four and five people. Previous research has shown that groups perform better than the average individual on a wide range of problems. However, this study tested the relationship between group size and performance as compared to that of an equivalent number of individuals by comparing the number of trials to solutions and answers given for complex problems. The groups of three, four, and five performed better than the best of an equivalent number of individuals on the letters-to-numbers problems.
The summary of the research findings states that:
Groups of size three, four, and five performed better than the best of an equivalent number of individuals, but groups of size two performed at the level of the best of two individuals. Groups of size three, four, and five performed better than groups of size two but did not differ from each other. These results suggest that groups of size three are necessary and sufficient to perform better than the best of an equivalent number of individuals on intellective problems.
Article: “Groups Perform Better Than the Best Individuals on Letters-to-Numbers Problems: Effects of Group Size”, Patrick Laughlin, Erin Hatch, Jonathan Silver, and Lee Boh, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 90, No. 4. The full of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office here.
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Team, Teamwork, Research, Psychology, Groups
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