ABSTRACT
Groups and Group Processes 1 Central to many organisations, and of increasing importance to others, is the existence
and operation of groups. Project groups, task groups or teams are a normal feature of
the working life of engineers, whether students or fully qualified professional
engineers. We shall use the terms ‘‘groups’’ and ‘‘teams’’ and ‘‘task’’ and ‘‘project’’
interchangeably. In this chapter we are going to look at the definition of a team, how they form, how
they work successfully and what causes them to be unsuccessful. As the main purpose
of teams is to make decisions, there will be a discussion of decision-making and then an
examination of the processes within teams when they are making decisions. What
happens within teams is called group process, the interactions of individual members of
a team that makes a team different than the sum of the individuals that make up the
team. Understanding this idea of groups being different than the sum of the individuals
is crucial to being a successful member of a team, and is crucial to knowing how to set up and manage teams so that they make a contribution to the organisation that is better
than any single individual, or group of individuals who simply have their individual
contributions summed. To understand water it is not enough to understand about
oxygen and hydrogen, you have to understand how they interact as water. If you are
a member of a task or project group or team it is important to understand what is
happening in the group so that it does not go ‘‘awfully wrong’’, and so that if it starts to
gowrong you can recognise what is happening and correct the process in order to reach
a successful outcome.
