Diagnosing a Group Failure

Diagnosing a group failure means identifying which social process produced it — conformity, obedience, groupthink, polarization, loafing, or diffusion — and naming the evidence for each.

One documented organizational failure worked through in full: the dissenting engineer who stopped dissenting, the instruction that came from above, the cohesion that punished objection, the meeting that moved the group further than any member started, and the safety check that no one owned. Each process named with the evidence that distinguishes it from the others, including one that turns out not to apply.