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Organizational factors and participation in committees
Author(s) -
Chell E.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1979.tb00303.x
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , field (mathematics) , applied psychology , mathematics , pure mathematics
Previous studies of group dynamics have shown that in laboratory situations individuals can be labelled as high, low or medium participators. Moreover, it appeared that high participators tended to dominate the group, have more influence and contribute more in terms of attempted solutions (Bales, 1953; Barber, 1966; Chell, 1976). Was this an artifact of the laboratory situations or can these particular dynamics be applied to field groups? Data were collected from joint consultative committees in five organizations. Groups were divided into high, medium and low participators and it was predicted that if high participators were dominating then they would make more lengthy speeches and would thus have a higher average speech length than medium or low participators. Total number of utterances of each participant of each meeting was correlated with his average speech length. The hypothesis received substantial support. It seems that the division of groups into high, medium and low participators is meaningful.