ABSTRACT
I said earlier that a group lives in an external environment, and must continually adapt itself to external change, such as Britain is currently trying to do in relation to Europe and the Commonwealth. In Human Behavior in Organizations, Argyris tells us that a complete organizational theory ‘will require that the organizational and environmental studies be interrelated’. In The Study of Groups Josephine Klein says that ‘a group has to make continuous adjustments to the environment if it is to survive. When the environment changes the group has to change also….’ She goes on to say: ‘All the consequences that may conceivably be relevant to the change which the group faces, if it is to avert the danger to its survival, must be brought into the open, and their likelihood and relative priority evaluated. The more information is available, and the more freely it travels in the group, the better the task can be performed. The more links there are between members, the shorter the diameter is likely to be, and the more efficient the spread of information. Moreover, the more links there are, the less likely the group is to suffer from the consequences of differentiation between members. Such freedom of interaction also corrects distortions in judgement and aids the correction of errors in the group.
