“all come together…they may surpass—collectively and as a body, although not individually—the quality of the few best…when there are many who contribute to the process of deliberation, each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence…some appreciate one part, some another, and all together appreciate all.” — AristotlePolitics.
“The benefits from discussion lie in the fact that even representative legislators are limited in knowledge and the ability to reason. No one of them knows everything the others know, or can make all the same inferences that they can draw in concert. Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments.” — John Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
This is Independence Day in the United States, when we commemorate the passage of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It’s not a solemn holiday hereabouts: we have parades, picnics, outdoor activities of all sorts, and fireworks after dark. Yet remembrance of the Declaration lends some insights about some serious subjects, such as what we mean by “deliberation” and the challenges that professionals face in getting the best out of group work.
Thomas Jefferson (founder of the University of Virginia) was the principal author of the Declaration. His autobiography recounts the process by which the Continental Congress decided on declaring independence and how to communicate it. In essence, the Declaration was written between June 11th and 28th. Congress approved a resolution for independence on July 2nd and then the formal Declaration on July 4th. Delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2nd.
Judging by all the merriment today, the Continental Congress made the right decision. Perhaps this feeling of satisfaction makes us all optimists about group decision-making. Old-fashioned deliberation–the face-to-face exchange of facts and opinions, reasoning with one another, perhaps voting at the end of the discussion—is a time-honored means for bringing together what people know. James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowdsargued that the wisdom of the collective is generally greater than that of individual experts within the collective. Condorcet’s Jury Theorem lends some rigor to the wisdom of crowds: groups will do better than individuals, and the bigger the group, the better, as long as each person in the group is more likely than not to be correct.
But agreement on the Declaration of Independence was not a simple process: contentious, fraught with delays, and but for some late-arriving delegates, would not have had the unanimous support of the states. This reminds us how difficult it is for group decision-making to achieve constructive closure.
Group decision-making can produce pernicious outcomes. Speaking to this is the book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, by Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at University of Chicago Law School. Sunstein says that face-to-face deliberation “is full of pitfalls. Deliberating groups can blunder badly; sometimes they act like mobs….Does deliberation actually lead to better decisions? Often it does not. Group members may impose pressures on one another, leading to extremism or to a consensus on falsehood rather than truth….The problem is that deliberating groups often do not obtain the knowledge that their members actually have. “ Sunstein says that deliberating groups suffer from four problems. They amplify the errors of their members. Sometimes members of a group simply don’t share with others the information they have—perhaps out of respect for information publicly announced by others. (The failure of some engineers to speak out in advance of the Challenger disaster is an example.) Third, deliberating groups can display cascade effects, in which individuals go along with the crowd to maintain their good opinion, or in which two uncertain people appears to lend credence to a position that other uncertain people decide to follow. Finally, deliberating groups can go to extremes, or polarize, if members of the group tend to think alike. Nicholas Negroponte and Cass Sunstein have described the effects of echo chambers or opinion “cocoons” formed by information filters that tend to give you only the news you care to hear (Lou Dobbs on CNN versus Fox News)—in the absence of diverse news and opinion, the individual’s views will grow more polarized.
Teachers observe these difficulties about group deliberation in the context of the case-method classroom. Managers face these difficulties as well in trying to reach a decision in a business meeting. In any of these settings, the task for the discussion leader is to bring out the knowledge and opinions that everyone has. Ideally, one will have some influence over the composition of the group—diversity of backgrounds helps to fight amplification of errors and polarization. But Sunstein argues that deliberation is not the only route to good group decisions and suggests three alternatives.
- Survey the members of the group and simply compute the statistical average of their sentiments. Such surveys are the epitome of the Condorcet Jury Theory—with all of its strengths and weaknesses. If members of the survey group know their stuff and individually have a tendency to be right, perhaps group surveys will work. Condorcet emphasized that the voters in a survey must be “enlightened.” Increasingly, I see in meetings the use of voting buttons to gain a quick sense of the group.
- Develop some kind of market for ideas and allow members to invest in their beliefs. The Iowa Electronic Markets, for instance, have proved to be excellent predictors of the outcomes of key uncertainties, such as elections. The problem with markets for ideas is that they are as susceptible to error as are other kinds of markets—think of the bubbles in mortgage loans in 2006 or in tech stocks in 1999.
- Employ the Internet to solicit information and opinions, and to converge to an outcome. Examples of mechanisms are Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon.com, and the countless blogs.
Perhaps by the Tercentennial in 2076, the technology-enhanced methods of deliberation will have been perfected to the extent that we can greatly reduce the need for face-to-face deliberation. The impact on business practices and management education makes for interesting speculation—it seems probable to me that both will change fundamentally in the coming decades. However, I think that Aristotle and Rawls have it right: we still need deliberation—enhanced however it may be with technology—to aggregate the knowledge and wisdom of the group. The remarkable outcome in July 1776 is one reminder of the importance of good deliberation and the skills of leadership necessary to achieve it.
Posted by Robert Bruner at 07/04/2008 10:04:59 PM