Organizational communications in Hong Kong: a cultural approach to groupthink

Purpose – The term, groupthink, refers to group over‐cohesiveness that causes defective decision making. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to explore common Chinese cultural characteristics which have the potential to lead to symptoms of groupthink within the Hong Kong organizational environment. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology called “quality function deployment” was applied to measure the relationships between a set of predefined Chinese cultural factors and the groupthink symptoms. Findings – This research found that among all the Chinese cultural factors, the aspect of status has a strong relationship with the symptoms of groupthink. Originality/value – This paper provides useful insights into aspects of groupthink and Chinese cultural characteristics.