Management of poor performance: A comparison of manager, group member, andgroup disciplinary decisions

Managers and 231 members of 41 work groups representing 4 diverse organizat ions participated in an experiment involving disciplinary decisions. Manage rs and group members responded individually to scenarios describing a group member's poor performance, followed by group members meeting to reach cons ensus on the disciplinary decisions. As hypothesized, manager disciplinary decisions were more severe than decisions made by individual group members. Contrary to predictions, the severity of manager and group disciplinary de cisions did not differ. A test of choice shifts revealed that when the prev ailing view among individual group members was for a relatively lenient dis ciplinary action, the group consensus decision was more severe than the ave rage of the individual decisions. Attributions and outcome seriousness were found to influence the severity of manager, group member, and group decisi ons.