How And Why Groups Form

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Term Paper Title	How And Why Groups Form
# of Words	1398
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.59

How and why groups form
How they influence the behaviour of large organisations???

1.1 Introduction
     Throughout history people have joined together in groups to accomplish a wide range of purposes. Men and women form personal relationships to procreate, to raise families. These family groups are probably among the oldest and most basic types of groups but there are many more: decision making groups, social groups, political groups and so on. It is then obvious that a large proportion of human behaviour occurs in groups. Governments form groups, companies set up groups and university students form groups to undertake large assignments.

2.1 Definition of small groups
     There are many authors that give their definitions of what a small group is and what it consists of. These definitions are not necessarily unique, if fact a lot of them overlap.  A popular definition of a group was coined by Bales:

     "A small group is defined as any number of persons engaged in interaction with one another in a single face to face meeting or a series of meetings, in which each member receives some impression or perception of each other member distinct enough so that he can, either at the time or in later questioning, give some reaction to each others as an individual person, even though it be only to recall that the other was present" (Bales, 1950, p.33).

Other definitions place more weight on motivation as the essential characteristic of group:

     "We define "group" as a collection of individuals whose existence as a collection is rewarding to the individuals"(Bass, 1960, p. 390)

     This definition implies the ends of a satisfactory reward as being the most critical element for identifying the aggregate as a group (in other words the carrot in front of the nose motivation!).
However, for the purpose of this assignment a group at its most basic level can be defined as:

     "A group is two or more interdependent individuals interacting and influencing each other in a way that each person influences and is influenced by each other person, in collective pursuit of a common goal" (Personal hybrid definition influenced by: Shaw 1981, Bass 1960)

     Also, the wording in this assignment indicates that the type of groups we are dealing with is small groups. Therefore it would be legitimate to ask the question, "...how small is a small group?"  Actually, there is no clear-cut dividing line between small and large groups. However it is sometimes thought of like this, a grou...

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