Disadvantages of Collaboration in the Workplace

There are five disadvantages of collaboration in the workplace. The first disadvantages are the Incidence of Group Think. While bringing the different stakeholders together for the common good can introduce various new perspectives to the lively of the discussion, there are also the looming threat of group think. This occurs when the stronger personalities are so influential that they manage to take over the discussion and supplant their ideas as the outcome for the group. The second disadvantages are Possible uncertainty in Roles and Responsibility. If the responsibilities of the different stakeholders are not clearly defined their contribution may fall into uncertainty and the results can only be chaos. Uncertainty is particularly common in collaborative groups that are extremely large. The benefit of having several different perspectives starts to decline after an optimum number of members are crossed and this number may vary from project to project. The third disadvantages are The Cost of Collaboration May Be High. Although the advancements in technology make it possible for collaborative efforts to cross international barriers and even time zones, the cost of doing this must be factored into the equation. The larger of the number of individuals involved in the collaborative effort the greater the cost of the exercise in terms of directly facilitating meetings and indirectly because of the time spent away from their other duties. “Direct costs is involved in completing a research project as an individual. Time and energy (physical and mental) must be spent in surveying the literature, articulating a problem and/or hypothesis, gathering data, analyzing the data, and writing up the results. Working on such a project as a group incurs another set of costs that are not present in the individual project, namely transaction costs.” (Fiechtner, Susan, and Elaine Davis. 1992)   The forth disadvantages is the forth disadvantages is the Collaboration most often Leads to...