The tendency of Western groups to attend to the will of the highly
verbal as though it were the will of the group is fairly well
documented. From the demogogues of the oral age, to the writerly
philosophers of the Modern age...and now in the postmodern chaos of the
electronic world.
Bummer!
dale cyphert
Martin Owen wrote:
>
> Eva writes in reponse to Phillip>>>
> "Nevertheless, it is very much a part of human psychology to READ it as
> consensus and as "the will of the List". I guess that we are by evolution
> prone to transfer our modes of perception from activities in a
> same-place&same-time context. The "we" includes myself: to me as
> participant my research findings are counter-intuitive."
>
> List dynamics are joyful and problematic as we all experience. Other
> systems are also multifaceted. There are voting systems built into many
> groupware products (and rarely used)
>
> Whitworth and McQueen describe a social process of using such voting
> systems to "vote before discussing", thus eliminating the need to have any
> discussion at all on many issues.
>
> They report: "The method derives from a three-process integrative theory
> of group interaction, where group cohesion arises primarily from normative
> influence rather than task information exchange". When the paper was
> presented, we were informed there was not much point in "yarning" about
> things we all agree about when we could be getting on with our lives on
> the beach. (the conference was in Maui).
>
> Phillip, you may care to observe these socio-cultural perspectives were
> presented by New Zelanders.
>
> Eva, I agree we need more Russian irony ...hard to achieve on lists ;-)
>
> Hwyl fawr
>
> Martin
-- Dale Cyphert, Ph.D. Business Communication Program Coordinator __________________________________________ College of Business Administration University of Northern Iowa 1227 W. 27th Street Cedar Falls, IA 50613 (319) 273-6150 dale.cyphert@uni.edu
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