Twenty-Five Years of the Group Processes Conference: A Review Essay

Abstract

Purpose

The primary purpose of this chapter is to assess the effects of twenty-five years of the Group Processes Conference on advances in the study of group processes that have taken place between 1988 and 2014.

Design/Methodology/Approach

This chapter places the twenty-five years of the Group Processes Conference in the context of the changes that have taken place between small groups research in the 1950s and group processes research in the 1980s and beyond.

Findings

Between the 1950s and 1980s small groups research reinvented, reconceptualized, and reinvigorated itself as group processes research. In this period, small groups research, its applied research, and its research programs became increasingly theory-driven, and its concept of the group and its levels increasingly abstract, general, and analytic. As a consequence of these changes, the concept of the field itself became increasingly analytic. The Group Processes Conference was at once a reflection of these changes and a driving force in the subsequent advances in group processes research. It both quickened and amplified the effects of individual-level factors and of thirty years of Advances in Group Processes on the transformation of the field and was also, like Advances in Group Processes, a driving force in the subsequent advances in group processes research. The present chapter concludes with an analysis of the mechanisms of the effects of the Group Processes Conference on group processes research.

Originality/Value

The program for the twenty-fifth year of the Group Processes Conference celebrates its effects on the field of group processes research.

Citation

Zelditch, M. (2014), "Twenty-Five Years of the Group Processes Conference: A Review Essay", Advances in Group Processes (Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 31), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0882-614520140000031001