Authors: Mark J. Wierman, U. Rex Dumdum, William J. Tastle
Tags: 2005
Teams, especially in non-routine knowledge work settings
such as achieving a robust and shared understanding of
the complex problem, the creative formulation of illstructured problems and information requirements
determination, continue to be hampered by weak
methods. Many methods are weak because they were
designed for structured problems and because they
presume an agreement of goals and objectives and hence
focus primarily on the search, generation, and selection of
the most efficacious means with which to achieve
predefined goals. In this paper we describe an objective
measure of agreement as an indication of agreement
(consensus) and dissention. Building on the generally
accepted Shannon entropy, this measure utilizes a
probability distribution and the specific distance between
categories of a Likert scale distribution to produce a value
that is confined to the unit interval. This measure is
always a maximum value at 1 and a minimum value at 0.
The measure is used to determine degrees of team or
group agreement or consensus when dealing with
decision-making. Using this measure, team facilitators
can easily determine the proximity of a group to arriving
at consensus.
Cite as:
Tastle W.J., Wierman M.J., Dumdum U.R. (2005). “Measuring Consensus in Team Settings Doing Non-routine Knowledge Work,” in AIS SIGSAND 2005, Cincinnati, OHIO, United States, April 23-24, 2005.
