Practice question · Multiple choice
A cohesive board unanimously approves a bad acquisition, and afterwards several members admit they had private doubts. Which condition made silence rational for each of them?
Hints
- Each member sees only the others' silence. What do they infer from it?
- Ask what it would cost to be the sole dissenter in a room of apparent believers.
Show the answer
A. The illusion of unanimity, read from the others' silence
Why
Silence is read as consent and consent produces more silence, so a room of doubters can vote unanimously. Janis's groupthink at its purest. It is why appointing a formal devil's advocate works: it makes dissent someone's assigned job rather than a personal risk.
Practise Groups and Organizations
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Business I is free to start.
More questions on Groups and Organizations
- A dyad is generally more stable than a triad, because two people have fewer relationships to manage.
- The rival firm’s team is a reference group, not an out-group. Why is that distinction worth keeping?
- Weberian feature or bureaucratic pathology? Sort each observation.
- Match each concept to its definition.
- An executive committee of long-time colleagues approves a doomed acquisition unanimously; afterwards, several…
- Which are characteristics of Weber’s ideal-type bureaucracy?
- Order the stages by which a cohesive committee slides into groupthink.
- Complete Cooley’s distinction.