The Institute has regularly encouraged symphony organizations to become less hierarchical and generally to employ more group process throughout the organization involving participants from various organizational constituencies. Many people resist this idea because they feel that group decision making, despite some virtues, is inherently slower than individual decision making, and even results generally in less good decisions.

As reported by Alan B. Krueger in the New York Times, December 7, 2000, sec. C, two Princeton professors recently conducted some interesting experiments comparing the results of group versus individual decision making. They published their findings in a report entitled Are Two Heads Better than One: An Experimental Analysis of Individual versus Group Decisionmaking. Follow the link to access their research report on the Internet.

As reported in the Times article, the results of one experiment, using the same conditions and incentives, indicated that groups of five individuals solving a statistical game problem and acting jointly, reached decisions just as quickly as individuals solving the same problem acting individually. Further, group decisions were more "accurate;" groups were less likely than individuals, by a significant difference, to arrive at an incorrect outcome. And whether the groups operated by unanimous consent or majority rule did not appear to make any difference in group decision making results.

In a second experiment, addressing decision choices within a small scale microeconomic model, groups once again made decisions equally quickly as individuals, and more accurately.

The New York Times story goes on to report that group performance was not explainable by the average, median, or best performance of members as individuals.

One of the researchers, Professor Blinder (formerly Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board), is quoted as follows:

"What the results suggest is that the interaction that takes place in a group does improve the decision making, so a group should not just have one person decide."