Groups, Teams, and Social Interaction

An examination of A. Paul Hare's findings about groups, teams, and social interaction, this book shows how these findings can be placed in the context of several theories, and discusses some applications that can be constructed for the analysis of various kinds of social situations. Part I brings together the literature on small workgroups, especially discussion groups and problem-solving groups, from laboratory studies by social psychologists and practitioners in organizational development.

The seven chapters cover basic concepts, characteristics of groups and teams, group and team development, problem solving and consensus, managing conflict, consultation, and team building with SYMLOG (a method of group evaluation developed by Freed Bales of Harvard University). Part II presents four theories of social interaction with examples of applications: functional, dramaturgical, exchange, and SYMLOG. The final chapter brings together features of these theories in a category system for the observation of groups.

A. PAUL HARE is Professor of Sociology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. From 1973 to 1980, he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He is the author of Creativity in Small Groups (1982), Social Interaction as Drama (1985), Dramaturgical Analysis of Social Interaction, with H. Blumberg (Praeger, 1988), and Small Group Research, with Blumberg, Davies, and Kent (1991). He is also the co-editor of The Symlog Practitioner, with R. Polley and P. Stone (Praeger, 1988) and eight other books, and the author of numerous journal articles.