Functional Perspective

779 Words4 Pages
Chapter 17 is about the Functional Perspective, this is the approach that describes and predicts task-group performances. It has been stated plenty of times that groups are a waste of time and slow production down, and if you want something done you should do it yourself. Randy Hirokawa and Dennis Gouran believe that these statements are extremely false, and as long as you find members for a group that care about the issue, are somewhat intelligent and aren’t afraid to speak their mind the task will be completed. Also that the group must go through the four functions of effective decision making which are, analysis of the problem, goal setting, identification of alternatives, and evaluation of positive and negative characteristics. I believe this theory to be true because I’ve found that working with more people help ideas more so then hinder them. Me and a group of friends were tasked with planning a week full of events for our university and that fact that it was a large number of us helped us string together a successful weekend. There were times when someone thought they had a good idea, but two others were able to point out why what they were thinking would in fact not be as successful as they thought. Each one of the members that were working in the group with me were very intelligent people and it showed through…show more content…
I recall a time when I wanted to buy a skateboard for my birthday and my father to me no. When I asked him why he said, “You’re not white son, we don’t skateboard.” It wasn’t until I was older that I understood exactly what he was saying. He wasn’t exactly saying that all blacks don’t skateboard, but it was not common to our culture to do so. Me skating boarding up and down our block would have been seen as me either trying to act white or breaking a cultural norm. Whichever way my father thought, he didn’t want me to be looked at like that by the other black adults in our

More about Functional Perspective

Open Document