Individual openness, rational argumentation, organizational learning culture and a group's ability to reach consensus for problem-solving in school settings

The goal of this dissertation was to increase understanding about a group's ability to reach consensus and promote decision quality in school settings. In most situations, judgments and decisions typically result from group decision-making. However, human groups can act irrationally during problem-solving. Group members easily are trapped by their own experience, education, and preference. Thus, heuristic judgments based on members' intuitions and memories are used for problem-solving. These intuitive judgments threaten decision quality and hinder consensus because group members oversimplify decision-making issues and cannot identify and describe issues effectively. In order to improve decision quality, three factors--individual openness, rational argumentation, and organization's learning culture--were hypothesized to affect a group's decision quality. Individual openness stresses that group members should speak out their ideas freely and reflect on their own ideas. Rational argumentation indicates that members need to provide logic, reasons, data, and evidence to support their communications with others. An organizational learning culture reinforces learning and inquiry among reinforces members to solve organizational problems.; A correlational study was designed to test the three procedural variables and their influence on decision quality and consensus. Twenty-five decision-making groups hold regular meetings in school settings completed five instruments for assessing individual openness, rational argumentation, organization's learning culture, decision quality and consensus. Group members' responses were analyzed to find the relationship between the five factors.; The results showed that the instruments on rational argumentation and organization's learning culture seemed to measure the same thing. Thus, rational argumentation and organization learning culture were merged to become one measure. This study suggests that individual openness, rational argumentation, decision quality and consensus are significantly related to each other. Decision quality or consensus is not influenced by either individual openness or rational argumentation beyond the other. Individual openness needs rational discussions to function for reaching consensus or promoting decision quality. Finally, the result of this study suggests that decision quality is more powerfully influenced by rational communication, particularly in situations fraught with controversy than does individual openness.