The Effects of Conscientiousness and Opportunity to Caucus on Group Performance

Given the increasing use of work teams in organizations, personnel selection procedures based on individual conscientiousness are likely to result in groups composed of highly conscientious members. This laboratory experiment examined the performance of groups of either high or low conscientious individuals, with the groups being given more (caucus condition) or less (no caucus condition) opportunity to develop performance norms. Groups of high-conscientious individuals given the chance to caucus were less productive than such groups that were not given the opportunity to caucus and less productive than groups of low-conscientious individuals given the chance to caucus. Thesefindings are explained in terms of the development of quality norms by the high-conscientious caucus groups at the expense of productivity.