Process gains in group decision making : A conceptual analysis, preliminary data, and tools for practitioners

Purpose – Hidden profiles are decision‐making tasks in which groups have the potential to outperform individual decision‐makers. This paper has two purposes: first, to provide a conceptual analysis of how the group potential for solving hidden profiles can be measured; second, to empirically determine the solution rates hidden profile groups would achieve: in the absence of any group processes (i.e. the group potential); and in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes. Design/methodology/approach – The group potential was determined by averaging the group members' decision quality prior to the discussion. To determine the hidden profile solution rates in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes, the standard hidden profile procedure was modified so that nothing but the individual‐level constraints could hamper the solution of hidden profiles. Findings – The actual group performance was significantly higher than the group potential, but significantly lower than the performance in the no dysfunctional group processes condition. Hence, dysfunctional group processes interfere with the realization of process gains. However, even in the absence of any dysfunctional group processes, groups did not always solve hidden profiles. Finally, the detrimental group process hampering the solution of hidden profiles does not seem to be biased information pooling favoring shared information but rather insufficient amount of information pooling. Practical implications – The results indicate that tools, which aim to facilitate the solution of hidden profiles, have to overcome both dysfunctional group processes, and individual‐level constraints. Originality/value – This is the first attempt to quantify process gains in hidden profile groups.