A. Researchers and pundits both argue that the wisdom of crowds is extremely fragile. The two specific circumstances include when people are influenced by the opinion of others which means they lose their independence and when opinions are distorted by cognitive biases which highlights the strong political views held by a group (Becker & Edwards, 2019).
B. New research zeros in and concludes that the wisdom of crowds is more robust than previously thought, it can even withstand the groupthink of similar-minded people. The caveat is that In order for the wisdom of crowds to retain its accuracy for making predictions, every member of the group must be given an equal voice, without any one person dominating. As the research discovered, the pattern of social influence within groups that is, who talks to whom and when is the key determinant of the crowd’s accuracy in making predictions (Becker & Edwards, 2019).
C. My thoughts as a leader after reading this article is that it can be sometimes difficult to lead a group of people if you have many influencers apart of that group. These select individuals can be a deciding factor in many of group discussions especially if individuals in the group find them more influencing. Now, I am the most influential I sort of have complete power of the group because most of them may mimic what ever I do but then sometimes that is not the case. Individuals may find someone else who they see as more opinionated and may want to follow them. That then makes the job as a leader more difficult. We’re not always going to be in situations where we can choose if we would like to be apart of centralized or decentralized networks. So based on that the job of leadership because challenging but it is something that can be fixed and work out for the better.
References:
Boyatzis, R. (n.d.). Weatherhead School of Management | Weatherhead School at … Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://weatherhead.case.edu/departments/organizational-behavior/workingPapers/WP99-6.pdf