Abilene paradox

Last updated

The Abilene paradox is a collective fallacy, in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of most or all individuals in the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned with the preferences of most of the others. [1] [2] It involves a breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group's, and therefore does not raise objections, or even states support for an outcome they do not want.

Contents

A common phrase related to the Abilene paradox is a desire to not "rock the boat". Like in groupthink, group members jointly decide on a course of action that they would not choose as individuals. However, while in groupthink, individuals undergo self-deception and distortion of their own views (driven by, for example, not wanting to suffer in anticipation of a future they sense they cannot avoid by speaking out), in the Abilene Paradox, individuals are unable to perceive the views or preferences of others, or to manage an agreement. [3]

Overview

The term was introduced by a management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his 1974 article "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement". [3] The name of the phenomenon comes from an anecdote that Harvey uses in the article to elucidate the paradox:

On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a [50-mile (80-km)] trip to Abilene for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, "Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time."

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, "I wasn't delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip that none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

The Abilene Paradox consists of five components: [4]

  1. The first component refers to mutual agreement of a group that the current situation is not acceptable. However, on the individual level, the members may be satisfied with the existing setting after they have compared it with proposed alternatives.
  2. The second component stands for ineffective communication within the group when several members express considerable support for a decision because they assume that is the desire of others. This process of communication reinforces assumptions that individual thoughts are a minority in the group.
  3. The third component of the Abilene Paradox is the vocalisation of group sentiment which arose from inaccurate assumptions or incorrect interpretation of the "signals" given by other members.
  4. The fourth component refers to the decision-maker's reflections on the actions taken, usually in the form of questions as follows: "Why did we do this?", "How can we justify our decision to others?".
  5. The fifth component refers to the defeat of the group leader to poor decision making in order to avoid making similar decisions in the future. There are several factors that may indicate the presence of the Abilene Paradox in the decision-making process: [4]

Research

Based on an online experiment with more than 600 participants, being prosocial and generally caring about the implications of one's actions on others (measured by the social value orientation measure) has been shown to increase the likelihood that an individual finds themselves in an Abilene Paradox with others, especially if they are not the first to have a say. [5]

The study at Makerere University Business School described the case of the Abilene Paradox in the process of decision-making in 2006: The institution was in a dispute with its parent institution, Makerere University, over its status as an independent university. A meeting of the MUBS Academic Staff Association (MUBASA) was called to discuss the issue, and the attendees voted to support MUBS council's decision to sue the Ministry of Education for interfering in a high court pronouncement. Each member of the association was to contribute towards the legal costs. By interviewing 68 employees, the researcher found that the majority of them never considered it a solution but thought that others strongly support the idea of starting the trial. [6]

Chen and Chang conducted a study about the effects, causes, and influences of the Abilene paradox, if any, on their elementary school; and this study involved twelve faculty members. Results of this Abilene paradox study showed a negative effect on the school’s operation, through poor communication, inadequate interaction, isolation, exclusion, and rising gossip. [7]

Applications of the concept

The theory is often used to help explain poor group decisions, especially notions of the superiority of "rule by committee". For example, Harvey cited the Watergate scandal as a potential instance of the Abilene paradox in action. [8] The Watergate scandal occurred in the United States in the 1970s when many high officials of the Nixon administration colluded in the cover-up and perhaps the execution of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. Harvey quotes several people indicted for the coverup as indicating that they had personal qualms about the decision but feared to voice them. In one instance, campaign aide Herbert Porter said that he "was not one to stand up in a meeting and say that this should be stopped", a decision that he attributed to "the fear of the group pressure that would ensue, of not being a team player". [8]

Another notable example of applying the Abilene paradox to the notorious real-world event can be seen during and in the aftermath of the 1989 United Kingdom Hillsborough tragedy and its cover-up by the authorities, which was characterised by individually hesitant, but otherwise compliant, government agents and the narrative and available information moulded and manipulated by the state. [9] The other frequently cited example is the case of Challenger disaster, thought in that case researchers use both the concepts of groupthink and the Abilene paradox as possible explanation of the events. [10]

The phenomenon of the Abilene paradox can also be used in information systems development, to conceptualise and operationalise the relationship between systems analysts, users, and other organisational stakeholders in situations of illusory agreement. [11]

Other theories add to the Abilene paradox’s explanation of poor decision-making in groups, notably, such phenomena as groupthink and pluralistic ignorance.

The concept of groupthink posits that individuals correctly perceive the preferences of others, undergo some form of motivated reasoning, which distorts their true preferences, and then willingly choose to conform; hence, they generally feel positively about the resulting group decisions. [12] The success of groupthink also hinges on the long-term homogeneity of the group, which seeks to keep that same cohesiveness and therefore to avoid all potential conflict. [13] However, while groupthink, to some extent, depends on the ability of individuals to perceive attitudes and desires of others, the Abilene paradox hinges on the inability to gage true wants and intentions of group members. [14]

The concept of pluralistic ignorance, on the other hand, is also defined as the situation where an individual underestimates the extent to which their views are shared by the other members of the group or organisation. [15] In some ways, pluralistic ignorance can be considered as a factor inciting situations where the Abilene paradox occurs — individuals’ inability to correctly estimate the share of potential supporters lead to the assumption of ‘the worst case scenario’ and in-advance mitigation of potential risks of dealing with the opponents. Some researchers consider pluralistic ignorance to be a wider-ranging concept: while both groupthink and the Abilene paradox are usually discussed as the detriments to successful group decision-making, pluralistic ignorance is sometimes evaluated neutrally. [16]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Arrow</span> American economist (1921–2017)

Kenneth Joseph Arrow was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. Along with John Hicks, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972.

Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consensus decision-making</span> Group decision-making aiming for universal agreement

Consensus decision-making or consensus process is a group decision-making process in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the goal of achieving broad acceptance, defined by its terms as form of consensus. The focus on establishing agreement of at least the majority or the supermajority and avoiding unproductive opinion differentiates consensus from unanimity, which requires all participants to support a decision. Consensus decision-making in a democracy is consensus democracy.

The bandwagon effect is the tendency for people to adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. More specifically, it is a cognitive bias by which public opinion or behaviours can alter due to particular actions and beliefs rallying amongst the public. It is a psychological phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases with respect to the proportion of others who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

Organizational culture refers to culture related to organizations including schools, universities, not-for-profit groups, government agencies, and business entities. Alternative terms include corporate culture and company culture. The term corporate culture emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was used by managers, sociologists, and organizational theorists in the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decision-making</span> Cognitive process to choose a course of action or belief

In psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either rational or irrational. The decision-making process is a reasoning process based on assumptions of values, preferences and beliefs of the decision-maker. Every decision-making process produces a final choice, which may or may not prompt action.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decision theory</span> Branch of applied probability theory

Decision theory is a branch of applied probability theory and analytic philosophy concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome.

Managerial economics is a branch of economics involving the application of economic methods in the organizational decision-making process. Economics is the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Managerial economics involves the use of economic theories and principles to make decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources. It guides managers in making decisions relating to the company's customers, competitors, suppliers, and internal operations.

In psychology, the false consensus effect, also known as consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to "see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances". In other words, they assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population.

Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when other bystanders or witnesses are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pluralistic ignorance</span> Incorrect perception of others beliefs

In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own. In this phenomenon, most people in a group may go along with a view they do not hold because they think, incorrectly, that most other people in the group hold it. Pluralistic ignorance encompasses situations in which a minority position on a given topic is wrongly perceived to be the majority position, or the majority position is wrongly perceived to be a minority position.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teamwork</span> Collaborative effort of a team to achieve a common goal

Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work together towards a common goal.

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) is a technique within the international relations sub-field of political science dealing with theory, development, and empirical study regarding the processes and outcomes of foreign policy.

A pseudoconsensus is a false consensus, reached most commonly when members of a group feel they are expected to go along with the majority decision, as when the voting basis is a large supermajority and nothing can be done unless some of the members of the minority acquiesce. This can cause problems such as the Abilene paradox. Robert's Rules of Order notes that this was part of the impetus for switching from consensus to majority as the voting basis in the British House of Lords:

This evolution came about from a recognition that a requirement of unanimity or near unanimity can become a form of tyranny in itself. In an assembly that tries to make such a requirement the norm, a variety of misguided feelings – reluctance to be seen as opposing the leadership, a notion that causing controversy will be frowned upon, fear of seeming an obstacle to unity – can easily lead to decisions being taken with a pseudoconsensus which in reality implies elements of default, which satisfies no one, and for which no one really assumes responsibility. ... Robert saw, on the other hand, that the evolution of majority vote in tandem with lucid and clarifying debate – resulting in a decision representing the view of the deliberate majority – far more clearly ferrets out and demonstrates the will of the assembly.

Group decision-making is a situation faced when individuals collectively make a choice from the alternatives before them. The decision is then no longer attributable to any single individual who is a member of the group. This is because all the individuals and social group processes such as social influence contribute to the outcome. The decisions made by groups are often different from those made by individuals. In workplace settings, collaborative decision-making is one of the most successful models to generate buy-in from other stakeholders, build consensus, and encourage creativity. According to the idea of synergy, decisions made collectively also tend to be more effective than decisions made by a single individual. In this vein, certain collaborative arrangements have the potential to generate better net performance outcomes than individuals acting on their own. Under normal everyday conditions, collaborative or group decision-making would often be preferred and would generate more benefits than individual decision-making when there is the time for proper deliberation, discussion, and dialogue. This can be achieved through the use of committee, teams, groups, partnerships, or other collaborative social processes.

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation.

Groupshift is a phenomenon in which the initial positions of individual members of a group are exaggerated toward a more extreme position. When people are in groups, they make decisions about risk differently from when they are alone. The decision made tends to be even more risk-averse if the group members' opinions are risk-averse on average, and even more risk-seeking if the group members' opinions are risk seeking on average. In a group, people are likely to exhibit a slight preference towards riskier decisions as the risk is divided among the group members rather than borne by an individual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paradox of tolerance</span> Logical paradox in decision-making theory

The paradox of tolerance states that if a society's practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them. Karl Popper describes the paradox as arising from the fact that, in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Knowledge-based decision making</span> Decision-making process

Knowledge-Based Decision-Making (KBDM) in management is a decision-making process that uses predetermined criteria to measure and ensure the optimal outcome for a specific topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Team effectiveness</span> A teams ability to accomplish their goals or objectives

Team effectiveness is the capacity a team has to accomplish the goals or objectives administered by an authorized personnel or the organization. A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, share responsibility for outcomes, and view themselves as a unit embedded in an institutional or organizational system which operates within the established boundaries of that system. Teams and groups have established a synonymous relationship within the confines of processes and research relating to their effectiveness while still maintaining their independence as two separate units, as groups and their members are independent of each other's role, skill, knowledge or purpose versus teams and their members, who are interdependent upon each other's role, skill, knowledge and purpose.

References

  1. ↑ McAvoy, John; Butler, Tom (2007). "The impact of the Abilene Paradox on double-loop learning in an agile team". Information and Software Technology. 49 (6): 552–563. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.012.
  2. ↑ McAvoy, J.; Butler, T. (2006). "Resisting the change to user stories: a trip to Abilene". International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management. 1 (1): 48–61. doi:10.1504/IJISCM.2006.008286.
  3. 1 2 Harvey, J. B. (1974). "The Abilene paradox: the management of agreement". Organizational Dynamics. 3: 63–80. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(74)90005-9.
  4. 1 2 3 Harvey, Michael; Buckley, M. Ronald; Novicevic, Milorad M.; Halbesleben, Jonathon R.B. (2008). "The Abilene Paradox After Thirty Years: A Global Perspective". IEEE Engineering Management Review. 36: 43. doi:10.1109/emr.2008.4490138. S2CID   38801567 . Retrieved 24 December 2023.
  5. ↑ Flores, Lia; Mannahan, Rachel; Sohn, Jinyeong (2023). "The Abilene Paradox: The Curse of Caring Too Much". SSRN   4406948.
  6. ↑ Bagire, Vincent Amooti (1 December 2010). "Pretended Agreement in Decision Making: Exploring the Abilene Paradox in Uganda". Journal of Management Policy and Practice. 11 (5): 106–113.
  7. ↑ 陳成宏; 張文權 (16 November 2018). "組織防衛：國民小學學校行政決策中「艾比林弔詭」之探討" [Organizational Defense: A Study of 'The Abilene Paradox' in Elementary School Administration Decision-Making]. 學校行政 (118): 85–110. doi:10.6423/HHHC.201811_(118).0006. ProQuest   2160689087.
  8. 1 2 Harvey, Jerry (Summer 1988). "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement". Organizational Management. 17 (1). American Management Association: 19–20. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(88)90028-9.
  9. ↑ Montgomery, Anthony (2022). "Concerted Collusion: Studying Multiagency Institutional Cover-Up". Frontiers in Psychology. 13. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.847376 . PMC   9244796 . PMID   35783708.
  10. ↑ Dimitroff, Robert D.; Schmidt, Lu Ann; Bond, Timothy D. (June 2005). "Organizational Behavior and Disaster: A study of conflict at NASA". Project Management Journal. 36 (2): 28–38. doi:10.1177/875697280503600204. S2CID   115872990.
  11. ↑ Browne, Glenn J.; Appan, Radha; Safi, Roozmehr; Mellarkod, Vidhya (December 2018). "Investigating illusions of agreement in group requirements determination". Information & Management. 55 (8): 1071–1083. doi:10.1016/j.im.2018.05.013. S2CID   53237080.
  12. ↑ Ronald R. Sims (1 January 1994). Ethics and Organizational Decision Making: A Call for Renewal. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp.  55–56. ISBN   978-0-89930-860-9.
  13. ↑ Turner, Marlene E; Pratkanis, Anthony R (February 1998). "Twenty-Five Years of Groupthink Theory and Research: Lessons from the Evaluation of a Theory". Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 73 (2–3): 105–115. doi:10.1006/obhd.1998.2756. PMID   9705798. S2CID   15074397.
  14. ↑ Halbesleben, Jonathon R.B.; Wheeler, Anthony R.; Buckley, M. Ronald (23 January 2007). "Understanding pluralistic ignorance in organizations: application and theory". Journal of Managerial Psychology. 22 (1): 65–83. doi:10.1108/02683940710721947.
  15. ↑ Zhu, David H.; Westphal, James D. (2011). "Misperceiving the Beliefs of Others: How Pluralistic Ignorance Contributes to the Persistence of Positive Security Analyst Reactions to the Adoption of Stock Repurchase Plans". Organization Science. 22 (4): 869–886. doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0575. JSTOR   20868901. S2CID   30377299.
  16. ↑ Halbesleben, Jonathon R.B.; Wheeler, Anthony R.; Buckley, M. Ronald (23 January 2007). "Understanding pluralistic ignorance in organizations: application and theory". Journal of Managerial Psychology. 22 (1): 65–83. doi:10.1108/02683940710721947.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.