Consensus and single leader decision-making in teams using structured design methods

Decision-making in teams can be accomplished by including varying levels of team member opinion. This study considers two styles of group decision-making, consensus building and single leader decision-making with input from the team, in structured design selection tasks. The role of decision-making style in the speed of decision-making, team member satisfaction, and decision quality are examined. In this study, single leader was found to be faster than consensus. However, single leader was not rated by teams as faster, suggesting that perception of speed may be more important than actual speed. It was also found that when there was more ambiguity in a decision, as represented by a smaller point spread between choices, teams tended to rate speed and process quality lower.