a larger organisation. Organisations also use forecasts published by an
individual expert as the basis of their planning. The techniques we are
going to discuss try to address the weaknesses of this individual approach.
However it needs to be stressed that while there are obvious problems with
relying on a single individual it has to be borne in mind that futures fore-
casting is largely more of an art than a science.
■ Consensus forecasting
To overcome the limitations of individual forecasting the obvious step is
to involve a group of individuals in the forecast. These individuals will
develop a forecast by reaching some sort of consensus. There are different
methods available to reaching this consensus, a straightforward Jury sys-
tem or the Delphi technique.
Jury forecasting
According to Dalrymple (1989) and Mentzer and Cox (1984) a jury of execu-
tive opinion is one of the most popular forms of forecasting used by organ-
isations. Effectively a group of company executives (or it could be a panel
of experts external to the company) are brought together to discuss their
respective views of events that may occur in the future. A group forecast
emerges that is the consensus view of the group. Any forecast will depend
on the quality of the individuals within the group. There are several prob-
lems with a jury method. Decisions about the composition of the jury will
have a major impact on the judgements the group will derive. The consen-
sus reached by a jury, as it attempts to reach an accommodation all mem-
bers can live with, may diminish the input of the more talented forecasters.
An even greater threat is that persuasive individuals, or those with greater
status, rather than those with the most knowledge dominate the group. The
greater the cohesiveness of the group the more likely it is that they will be
unwilling to listen to a dissenting individual within the group. This ten-
dency is called ‘groupthink’ and can have major implications for manage-
ment groups in general and jury forecasting in particular. Groupthink tends
to occur with group of individuals that know each other well, enjoy being
together and belonging to the same ‘ingroup’ (Janis, 1972; Janis and Mann,
1982). These ingroups are widespread in organisations.
Four key factors affect the way ingroups work and the level of group-
think that develops:
1 High cohesiveness: Ingroups display the tendency to have a high degree
of cohesiveness among their members. There is a great feeling of har-
mony among members of the group and a mutual self-support of fel-
low members. This result in members of the group increasingly
conforming and complying to group norms. Members are less willing
to show dissent during group meetings as a result.
Developing a future orientation 115