Blackwell Reference Online

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This chapter is about an interrelated set of processes that take place within, and constitute the action of, groups in organizations. Six years ago we wrote a chapter on group processes in organizations ( Argote & McGrath, 1993 ), in which we considered four CORE processes (construction, operation, reconstruction, and external relations). In that chapter, we stressed three themes: 1 that groups need to be studied as intact complex systems; 2 that groups are adaptive systems that are in continuous interchange with their embedding contexts and their embedded members, and therefore that the focus of study needs to be not just on the group as a system, but also on the interchanges between that group and its embedding contexts and embedded members; and 3 that groups are dynamic systems that need to be studied over time. Those three points can be summarized by asserting that groups are complex , adaptive , dynamic systems . Since then we have come to stress those three themes even more highly than we did in that earlier chapter. They are central to our other research activities in the interim. For example, those three themes are at the heart of a theoretical formulation by McGrath and colleagues ( Arrow, McGrath, & Berdahl, 2000 ; McGrath, Arrow, & Berdahl, in press ) in which they draw on concepts from general systems theory, dynamical systems theory, and complexity theory ... log in or subscribe to read full text