Example Of Bad Management As A Result Of Poor Leadership Skills Article Review

[Author’s name]
Review of the article “Developmental Patterns in Small and Large Groups” by Susan Wheelan and Robert McKeage (1993)
The group behavior is has been always attracting attention of the scholars. Comparison of the groups of different sizes play an important role, as the results have wide real-world implication helping managers organize the groups in the most efficient way. As Wheelan and McKeage demonstrate in the literature review section, small and large groups had been compared by many criteria, from cohesion to productivity, with results often being contradictory. However, the previous studies had mostly concentrated on the total result of the experience, whether it is participants’ satisfaction or productivity of the group, paying little attention to how these criteria had been developing with time.
Observing and reporting development over time is exactly the key contribution of the paper by Wheelan and McKeage. Not only did they analyze the behavior of the group according to several criteria, but also followed how it was changing with time.
The second intriguing element of the research is the data that was used for it – instead of gathering the responses from the participants on their impressions, or measuring the productivity of the event, Wheelan and McKeage concentrated on what has been actually said. Having recorded every session, they divided the transcripts into ‘complete thought’, which became the units of the analysis. The units than were distributed among seven groups that were the criteria for the study. Seven criteria in total were chosen – two related to tendency to follow or not to follow dominant mood, another two – to tendency to express or avoid warmth and intimacy, one that represented active, goal-oriented statements, and, finally, two that related two confrontations and task avoidance.
Having collected data on both general levels for each criteria and trends over time for both groups, the authors were able to draw number of conclusions. First of all, Wheelan and McKeage found that there was little difference between small and large group in terms of development; however, there were other important differences. The study confirmed the results of the earlier studies, such as tendency of the small groups to be more cohesive, tendency of the larger groups to have more conflicts, and that bigger group produced smaller proportion of “Work” (active, goal-oriented) statements, which might mean that smaller groups are more productive, but this link is dubious.
While the work is undoubtedly valuable due to the ingenious approach towards collection and organization of data, one may be left wondering how valuable the contribution to understanding of group behavior is. It is not surprising that the similar studies produce contradictory results, as most of them focus on only one group, and the task to select a group of 30 individual that would more or less precisely represent the whole population is a close to impossible challenge in scale of a city, let alone a country, a continent or the world.