brought together and expected to function as a unit. Orasanu et
al. (1992b) emphasise the importance to teams, and in the training
of teams, that:
- Everyone understands the task/objective and its implications.
- The informal and formal roles are clarified.
- Guidelines and rules for the team’s work are established.
- One clarifies each other’s demands and expectations.
- One creates space for an open and creative critical analysis of
the team’s shared tasks.
Although anyone in a group can have a solution to a problem, it
is essential to have support for the solution within the group and
from the person leading the group. It is important to have an at-
mosphere within the group that stimulates collective problem sol-
ving. Such an atmosphere is largely dependent on leadership in the
group and on the leadership style of the person in charge. Leader-
ship development, where inspiration and motivation are keywords,
can be an appropriate leadership style in many situations.
Yet another aspect that is important in understanding work
with decisions and supporting information for decision making
in groups is that the situations groups encounter can be complex
and dynamic. A situation’s complexity can go beyond individual
expertise and require that various specialists communicate with
one another so as to establish an understanding of the entire si-
tuation. The problems are too large and too complex for a single
person to handle.
Unfortunately, the organisational context is perhaps the grea-
test source of problems when working with decisions and sup-
porting information for decision making in groups or teams, i.e.
there is a policy, an organisational essence or an organisational
atmosphere that either permits or forbids certain things, certain
conditions or certain behaviour. Organisational structures and
constructions often affect a team’s cognitive strategies. Teams
that work with distributed decision making in dynamic situations
require a clear distribution of tasks where various experts, based
on their various premises, can analyse and monitor the areas that
are of significance to them. The problem with this, however, is
that individuals can make faulty probability assessments, circum-
vent logic and possibly confirm a hypothesis rather than reject
it. Individuals can, as can groups, fall into the trap of overesti-
mating their capacities and competences, and ignore warnings,