ABSTRACT
Effective decision making is crucial for groups to achieve their goals and objectives. Group communication plays a vital role in the decision-making process, as it allows group members to share information and preferences and discuss the available options. In addition, group communication enables members to engage in meta-communicative and meta-cognitive discourses that help groups establish common ground and reach a consensus. This chapter provides an overview of common group decision-making strategies while highlighting the role of communication in the decision-making process. Laboratory studies typically employ an information-processing approach and focus on well-defined decision tasks. Case and field studies examine the role of group communication in more complex, ill-defined decision scenarios. Meta-communicative and meta-cognitive discourses are particularly relevant in these scenarios, in which groups have to generate choices and develop decision criteria.
