T-Groups: A Survey of Research. by C. L. Cooper; I. L. ManghamReview by: Lee BolmanAdministrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Jun., 1972), pp. 307-308Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management,Cornell UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393979 .

Accessed: 09/06/2014 20:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Sage Publications, Inc. and Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University are collaboratingwith JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Administrative Science Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.252 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 20:26:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 307

expectations-raising programs which will im- prove attitudes about activities; (3) ob- stacle-eliminating programs which involve providing infrastructure, eliminating un- necessary government obstructions, and facil- itating initiating of the activity; and (4) structure changing programs which "suggests that firms are more likely to undertake a given activity if someone in each is respon- sible for making that kind of activity opera- tional" (p. 130).

Bilkey sums up his work with the view that "both the model and the methodology for its implementation are capable of much improvement" (p. 133). One such improve- ment involves better methods for selecting both the firms to be surveyed and the respon- dents within those firms. Perhaps minority economic development programs in the United States would gain from an association with industrial stimulation research pro- grams. On the other side, the research pro- gram might gain from a data collecting process which is probably capable of better control methods than those in less developed countries. In any case, by association with a respectable research program the minority economic development program just might attain a modicum of integrity and intellectual substance. And this might be the real value of the industrial stimulation concept.

Robert C. Vowels

Dean, School of Business Administration Atlanta University

ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH AND THE PROBLEM OF MEANING

T-Groups: A Survey of Research, by C. L. Cooper and I. L. Mangham. London: Wiley-Interscience, 1971. 283 pp. $12.50.

Five or ten years ago, the T-group was a sufficiently revolutionary innovation to pro- duce missionary ardor among many of its proponents, and defensive hysteria in its opponents. The battle is by no means over, but much of the emotional intensity has de- clined, and in a number of academic settings T-Groupers have become accepted members

of the establishment. The time is ripe for a definitive review of what is known and what remains to be learned about the T-group as an educational methodology. Cooper and Mangham have made the most sustained effort to date to produce such a review, but the work will be disappointing to many scholars and practitioners.

Cooper and Mangham organized their book into seven chapters, each dealing with a specific substantive area in T-group re- search (that is, effectiveness of T-groups in producing on-the-job change; before-and- after studies of T-groups; T-groups as a ve- hicle for organizational development; the effects of trainers; T-group composition; intragroup dynamics; and developmental trends within groups). Each chapter includes a review by the authors of research in the particular area, along with reprints of one or two major studies.

The book has two important strengths: (1) it is comprehensive, in the sense that the authors discuss most of the significant em- pirical work, particularly the work which has appeared since Stock's (1964) review; (2) the original studies which Cooper and Mang- ham have reproduced are representative of the best done on sensitivity training, and appear in one place for the first time.

The book is disappointing because it is unexciting, atheoretical, and virtually devoid of any serious effort to integrate and syn- thesize the available empirical work.

I found that the liveliest sections of the book were in some of the original empirical studies, even though I had read most of them before. Cooper and Mangham's reviews read like a research file-brief summaries of one study after another, spiced only by occasional criticisms of methodology. The accounts of many studies are so brief and superficial as to be largely unintelligible to anyone who has not already read the original.

Even more disappointing than the cursory treatment of many studies is the failure to make a serious effort to summarize and in- tegrate the research. The book contains no summary chapter, and very little bridging between chapters. Each of the individual chapters includes a final section labeled con- clusion, but this is usually one paragraph long and consists largely of a statement that

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.252 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 20:26:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

308 ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY

the results are inconclusive and the method- ology inadequate.

Methodological flaws and substantive am- biguity are very much present in the T-group literature, but the reviewer makes no inde- pendent contribution unless he tries to bring some order out of the confusion. For the most part, Cooper and Mangham leave this job to the reader. It is possible to do a more effective job, as Campbell and Dunnette (1968) demonstrated in their review of liter- ature on T-group effectiveness. Their review surveys roughly the same terrain covered in the first three chapters of Cooper and Mang- ham, but much more thoroughly and in- cisively. Campbell and Dunnette provide a very clear statement of those empirical gen- eralizations which emerge from the literature with some degree of confidence, and also provide specific suggestions for future re- search. Cooper and Mangham really do not furnish an equivalent.

In other areas-such as the effects of trainers and group composition-Cooper and Mangham's reviews are the only ones ex- tant, but better reviews are possible and should be forthcoming in the next few years.

One area of research which is largely omitted by Cooper and Mangham is the issue of psychological damage to participants, an omission which is probably due largely to the paucity of research at the time the authors wrote their book. This issue figures so prominently in much of the controversy about sensitivity training that a good over- view of research is much needed. To date, the best available source is the American Psy- chiatric Association's (1970) task force re- port.

The ASQ reader interested in learning more about the contribution of the T-group perspective to organization theory will find no help here; Argyris (1970) or Bennis (1969) would be better. The reader de- siring a concise summary of the effects of T-groups on organizational participants will do better to read Campbell and Dunnette (1968). And the reader who is merely curi- ous to learn about what happens inside T- groups could best satisfy the curiosity by reading Howard (1970). Cooper and Mang- ham's book will be of primary interest only to specialists in the area of sensitivity train-

ing. Despite its limitations, it provides the only review of several important areas of T-group research.

Lee Bolman

Assistant Professor of Industrial Administration

Carnegie-Mellon University

REFERENCES

American Psychiatric Association 1970 Task Force Report: Encounter Groups

and Psychiatry. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.

Argyris, C. 1970 Intervention Theory and Method.

Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Bennis, W. G.

1969 Organization Development: Its Na- ture, Origins and Prospects. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Campbell, J. P., and M. D. Dunnette 1968 "Effectiveness of T-group experiences

in managerial training and develop- ment." Psychological Bulletin, 70: 73-104.

Howard, J. 1970 Please Touch. New York: McGraw-

Hill. Stock, D.

1964 "A Survey of research on T-groups." In L. P. Bradford, J. R. Gibb, and K. D. Benne (eds.) T-group Theory and Laboratory Method: pp. 395-441. New York: John Wiley.

Knowledge From What? Theories and Methods in Social Research, by Derek L. Phillips. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1971. 224 pp. $3.95, paper.

In this short, well-written volume, Phillips argues that sociologists must take a subjec- tive orientation with respect to the phe- nomena they study, that they should seek involvement in those phenomena, and that they should strive for understanding in the Weberian tradition. The importance of his review of these much-discussed issues stems from the current state of affairs within soci- ology and the nature of Phillips' professional career.

While sociology never has been free of intradisciplinary debate concerning both

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.252 on Mon, 9 Jun 2014 20:26:43 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions