What Methodologies Are Needed to Study Group Communication? A Bounded Rationality Perspective

Abstract

A proposal in favor of a meta-theoretical approach to the study of group communication is advanced, which offers novel questions on group communication scholarship: the study of the bounded rationality of groups and teams. The chapter focuses on methodological implications of the bounded rationality perspective for group communication research. The notion of bounded rationality comes with an invitation to analyze group communication from the vantage point of an adaptation process that involves the communication processes that are employed by groups along with characteristics of the environments in which groups are situated. The general concept of bounded rationality is introduced and several promises that this meta-theoretical lens offers to group communication scholarship are described. Three methodological signature characteristics are highlighted: the development and test of process models, the analysis and description of the ecological and social environments of groups, and the development of representative designs in the study of groups.