Stepladder technique

The Stepladder technique is a decision-making approach intended to facilitate group effectiveness by structuring the entry of members into a group. Step 1 of the technique involves the creation of a two-person subgroup (the core) that begins preliminary discussion of the group task. After a fixed time interval, another group member joins the core group and presents his or her ideas concerning the task. The three-person group then discusses the task in a preliminary manner. The process continues in steps until all members have systematically joined the core group. When this occurs, the group arrives at a final solution. Figure 1 displays the stepladder technique as applied to a four-person group.

Requirements

The technique has four requirements.

First, each member is given sufficient time to think about the task before entering the core group.

Second, the new member must make a preliminary solution presentation before hearing the core group's ideas.

Third, sufficient time is allocated to discuss the problem as each person is added.

Fourth, the final decision occurs only after the entire group is formed. These steps make it difficult for a member to "hide" in the group.

Applications

The stepladder technique has many potentially useful applications, notably in business, education and any general organisational context where people get together in order to make decisions. This technique has been tested mainly with 4-people groups. The research literature on group decision-making generally agrees that any decision-making group larger than 9 or 10 people starts losing productivity and quality of decisions, an effect due mainly to social loafing (free rider effect). This effect also exists in small groups but is less likely, and can be further reduced through the use of the stepladder technique.

A recent application for this technique has been with audioconferencing, as suggested in a 2002 study by Rogelberg, O'Connor and Sederburg. Consistent with research conducted on face-to-face groups, the stepladder technique was found to facilitate the decision-making performance of groups interacting via audioconference.

Research Evidence

Research on the effectiveness of the stepladder technique has shown that stepladder groups produce higher-quality decisions than conventional groups.

The number of studies that have tried to test the Stepladder technique empirically is limited, but the results are encouraging. In his study, Orpen (1995) reported the following:

After completing the problem (the NASA moon landing exercise) individually, 160 management students were randomly assigned to one of 40 four-member groups in either the stepladder condition or the conventional group condition, where subjects entered their groups and worked on the problem simultaneously. The stepladder groups produced significantly better decisions than the conventional groups, as hypothesized, suggesting that managers can use the technique to improve team performance in appropriate circumstances.

Performance gains associated with the stepladder technique have been documented for face-to-face groups. In Rogelberg et al’s (1992) initial study, each member of the group proceeded through the stepladder process at an experimenter-regulated pace. Results indicated that groups who used the stepladder technique outperformed groups who used a more conventional approach. These findings were later replicated by Orpen (1997). Recently, Rogelberg and O’Connor (1998) allowed groups to self-regulate (i.e., use as much time as needed at each step). Again, stepladder groups outperformed groups employing a conventional approach.

See also

*Decision making
*Group process
*Group dynamics
*Team building

External links

* [http://personal.uncc.edu/sgrogelb/home.htm Steven G. Rogelberg's homepage]

Sources

#Orpen, C. (1995). Using the stepladder technique to improve team performance. "Team Performance Management, 1"(3), 24-27.
#Rogelberg, S. G., Barnes-Farrell, J. L. & Lowe, C. A. (1992). The stepladder technique : An alternative group structure facilitating effective group decision making, "Journal of Applied Psychology, 77"(5), 730-737.
#Rogelberg, S. G. & O'Connor, M. S. (1998). The stepladder technique : An alternative group structure facilitating effective group decision making, "Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2"(2), 82-91.
#Rogelberg, S. G., O'Connor, M. S. & Sederburg, M. (2002).Using the stepladder technique to facilitate the performance of audioconferencing groups, "Journal of Applied Psychology, 87"(5), 994-1000.
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