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Among the many influences on group decision making efficacy that have been identified by group researchers, the process that a group follows in arriving at a decision is widely regarded as one of the most important. This chapter reviews the research on group decision making processes for the purpose of explicating (a) the nature of group process, (b) the factors that influence group process, (c) the role that communication plays in group process, and (d) the influence of group process on decision making efficacy. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

State environmental agencies have been organized independently with a variety of structural schemes, and are responsible for the bulk of administration of federal environmental policy, such as the Clean Air Act. Using statistical models of air quality outcomes, this research compares three competing typologies for capturing agency differences: Ringquist (1993b), Lester (1990), and Wilson (1989). The findings indicate the most commonly used measure of organization, Ringquist (1993b), may be the weakest in comparison. Additionally, both Lester (1990) and Wilson (1989) show interesting advantages in comparison to each other. The findings provide some interesting insights into the difficult task of measuring organization.

Occupational stress is common in the workplace and leads to various negative outcomes such as burnout, turnover, and medical problems. Although occupational stress is associated with negative connotations, it also can foster workplace resiliency. Workplace resiliency involves the ability to recover quickly in the face of adversity. Emotionally laborious jobs, or jobs in which employees must modify, manage, or regulate their emotions as part of their work role, are inherently stressful. Thus, such jobs, while stress-inducing, may also offer employees opportunities to become more resilient at work. Currently, display rules, rules encouraging the suppression and expression of certain emotions, dictate workplace emotions and thus, interactions. Ultimately, display rule adherence makes it difficult for employees engaging in emotional labor to build resilience. In this chapter, the authors detail how and when emotional labor encounters lead to episodic and prolonged workplace resilience. Specifically, the authors outline instances in which employees engaging in emotional labor can create and sustain workplace resiliency by not deploying an acting strategy and instead, breaking character. The authors further discuss individual and organizational factors that may impact this process as well such as personality and organizational culture that serve as potential boundary conditions to workplace resilience capacity. The authors conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Two key factors in the success of general-purpose computing platforms are the creation of a technical standards architecture and managing an ecosystem of third-party suppliers of complementary products. Here, we examine Symbian Ltd., a startup firm that developed a strong technical architecture and broad range of third-party complements with its Symbian OS for smartphones. Symbian was shipped in nearly 450 million mobile phones from 2000 to 2010, making it the most popular smartphone platform during that period. However, its technical and market control of the platform were limited by its customers, particularly Nokia. From 2007 onward, Symbian lost market share and developer loyalty to the new iPhone and Android platforms, leading to the extinction of the company and eventually its platform. Together, this suggests lessons for the evolution of a complex ecosystem, and the impact of asymmetric dependencies and divided leadership upon ecosystem success.

The reliance on teams in today’s work environment underscores the importance of understanding how teams function. To better understand teams, one must be able to measure team dynamics or interaction. The purpose of this chapter is to outline an unobtrusive approach to measuring team dynamics from verbal communications.

The basic premise of this approach is that the words we use provide insight into how we feel and think at any given time. The methodology described in this chapter employs a lexical analytic approach to examining team dynamics. To best accomplish this, we first identify the principal features or dimensions of teamwork and then we propose lexical measures that may map to these processes.

This approach can be employed to track team functioning over time “at a distance” without interrupting task performance.

This chapter describes an approach to measuring relevant teamwork dimensions through verbal content. This approach has the potential to give us direct, unobtrusive insight into the emotional and cognitive states of teams. It is original in its examination of how team dynamics can be indexed in speech.