ABSTRACT
This was a period before the Japanese automobile invasion, and the company was in fine fettle, except for some discomfort due to the increasing emissions and safety standards being imposed on the industry by government. A related phenomenon is that of group decision-making which can lead to inferior decisions in certain types of problems. One of these, termed "structured dissent", is similar to what some US Presidents have introduced as an aid to policy decisions: Each of several possible policy alternatives for a given decision is assigned to a staff member, who then prepares a policy paper arguing the merits of this alternative. The committee found numerous similar examples of innovations which were known, or even developed, by GM engineers, but introduced only belatedly after competition forced the company to do so. Again, the apparently technical problem was instead a social and organizational problem.
