Imagine that you and two coworkers are trying to figure out what restaurant to go to for lunch. The conversation might go something like this:
You: Where do you want to go for lunch?
Coworker 1: How about the burger place?
Coworker 2: I had a burger yesterday. How about the deli down the road?
Coworker 1: Oh yeah, they have good sandwiches.
You: Sure, sounds good to me.
In this example, one might say that the group of coworkers decided to go to the deli for lunch. But was it the group that actually decided? Can a group decide anything at all?
Do Groups Really Make Decisions?
We often attribute decisions to groups. But what really happened in the example above was that the three coworkers individually decided, and in doing so, a consensus was reached. The group itself is not the decision-maker; rather, its members individually decide and, in doing so, come to an agreement. The notion of a group making a decision is a way of describing an aggregate of individual choices, but the group does not possess its own agency.
The key insight here is that the individuals are the true decision-maker, and the group is, at best, a secondary phenomenon that emerges from their choices. Ludwig von Mises discussed this point in his 1949 book Human Action:
First we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals. A collective operates always through the intermediary of one or several individuals whose actions are related to the collective as the secondary source.
Only Individuals Act
Consider another example. In the news, we often hear stories like “Company A decided to purchase Company B,” or “Nation X decided to invade Nation Y.”
When we say, for instance, that one company “decided” to buy another, we really mean something more complicated. The decision may have been made by a top leader within the organization (such as the CEO) or based on a majority vote by the board of directors. Unfortunately, this is a bit cumbersome to say, so we use a convenient linguistic shortcut and say that “the company decided” to move forward with the acquisition, thus fostering the illusion of group decisions. But it was ultimately individuals within the company, vested with the authority to do so, who made the decision. Again, Mises stresses that the group cannot decide anything—only individuals can decide and act:
If we scrutinize the meaning of the various actions performed by individuals we must necessarily learn everything about the action of the collective wholes. For a social collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual members’ actions. The life of a collective is lived in the actions of the individuals constituting its body. There is no social collective conceivable which is not operative in the actions of some individuals.
Dealing with Group Dynamics
The fact that only individuals make decisions does not imply that these decisions exist within a vacuum. As F.A. Hayek pointed out in his essay “Individualism, True and False,” individuals are not atomistic, but instead exist within multiple groups such as families, organizations, and societies:
This fact should by itself be sufficient to refute the silliest of the common misunderstandings: the belief that individualism postulates (or bases its arguments on the assumption of) the existence of isolated or self-contained individuals, instead of starting from men whose whole nature and character is determined by their existence in society.
This social embeddedness means that decisions frequently involve and impact other stakeholders, and we often need to gather the input and agreement of others during the decision-making process. In such cases, the “group decision” can be reframed as many individual decisions happening at the same time. These situations require navigating certain dynamics:
- Are there specified rules that the members of the group need to follow in the decision-making process?
- If there is voting, does the decision need to be unanimous, or does a simple majority win?
- What happens in the case of a tie?
- How do we ensure that the process is viewed as fair?
- How can we avoid common pitfalls, such as groupthink?
- How do we ensure that everyone is heard, and one loud individual does not dominate the conversation?
Designing a fair and transparent decision-making process for a team, department, or company is necessary to ensure that everyone can contribute their input and feel like their feedback is valued. It also reduces confusion and streamlines the process when everyone knows and agrees to the rules of the game ahead of time.
People are not atoms—they are social beings nested within various groups. But groups do not have a life of their own, and so the idea of a “group decision” is misleading. In the end, group decisions are ultimately individual decisions.
