ABSTRACT
It seems impossible to talk about task-performing groups without considering in some detail the properties of the tasks that those groups are asked to carry out. For many real-world groups, the tasks they perform are their raison d’être; if there were no task to accomplish, no goal to achieve, there would be no group. This is typically the case in organizational settings, for example, where tasks are quite predictably the center of attention. Concerns about the nature of those tasks, and about what is required to carry them out, are frequently at the heart of managerial decisions regarding which groups will be assigned to perform which tasks and what kinds of resources will be provided in order to support the work of those groups.
