Abstract
2006 Ernest Bormann Research Award (from the Group Communication Division of the
National Communication Association)
—Dennis S. Gouran,
People live in groups, work in groups, and play in groups. As a result, groups
have been a focus of study across the social and behavioral sciences. Although
it has been actively pursued within individual disciplines and sub-disciplines,
group research as a whole remains fragmented and discipline-bounded.
brings together the threads that unify the field of group research. The book is
designed to define and describe theoretical perspectives on groups and to
highlight select research findings within those perspectives. In this text,
editors Marshall Scott Poole and Andrea B. Hollingshead capitalize on the
theoretical advances made over the last fifty years by integrating models and
theories of small groups into a set of nine general theoretical perspectives.
is the first book to assess,
synthesize, integrate, and evaluate the body of theory and research on small
groups across disciplinary boundaries.
Offers an interdisciplinary approach to group research with contributions from
authors across many fields; Includes nine theoretical perspectives, each written
by an author team composed of experts who have conducted independent research
within that perspective; Organizes chapters in a similar format to easily
compare the basic premises and findings examined across the various perspectives
covered; Concludes with a chapter that compares and contrasts the nine
perspectives in the form of seven “touchstones”- boundaries/embeddedness;
competition, conflict and interdependence; causality; regulation of interaction;
risk/uncertainty; cognition/intentionality, and time
summarizes the current state of
group theory and research in a brief volume that can be used by researchers and
in graduate courses that will train the next generation of group scholars. It is
an excellent supplementary textbook for graduate courses on small groups in many
disciplines, including Communication, Psychology, Management, Sociology,
Political Science, and Education.