Organizational Tonypandy: Lessons from a Quarter Century of the Groupthink Phenomenon

Abstract

We adopt the role of devil's advocate, arguing that the quarter-century experience with groupthink represents an unfortunate episode in the history of group problem solving research. In view of the facts that there has been remarkably little empirical support for the groupthink phenomenon, that the phenomenon rests on arguable assumptions, that published critiques of groupthink have generally been ignored by groupthink researchers, and that groupthink is presented as fact in journal articles and textbooks, we see continued advocacy of groupthink as a form of organizational Tonypandy, in which knowledgeable individuals fail to speak out against widely accepted but erroneous beliefs. We explore the nature and causes of this Tonypandy and encourage researchers to cast off the artificial determinism and constraints of the groupthink model and instead seek to inform the general group decision making literature.