The Big Role of Small Groups: A Research Agenda

The decisionmaking role of collegial bodies in politics, business, and civic associations is widely noted. However, extant work is fragmented by discipline and organizational type. In this study, we set forth a unified research agenda. We define the subject as a body that (a) is small, (b) meets regularly (c) over an extended period, and (d) is tasked with a nontrivial governance role. Next, we offer a preliminary survey of collegial bodies across the world and through history. Based on this survey, we argue that most enduring organizations in the modern era, regardless of their location, size, function, or sector, delegate important decisionmaking tasks to collegial bodies. In the third section, we tackle the problem of explanation. We propose a functionalist account in which collegial bodies provide an optimal choice in settings where decisionmaking tasks are especially complex. In the fourth section, we apply this theory to the question of how collegial bodies have arisen through history and at the present time. The concluding section offers reflections on the relevance of collegial bodies to democratic theory.