Socially Engineered Groups in Business Curricula: An Investigation of the Effects of Team Composition on Group Output

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Abstract
Group activities, a common feature of business education, are expected to continue to increase in popularity. This article explores the formulation of groups and “social-engineering” methodology. The formulation process differs from the more traditional random assignment or self-selection in that it attempts to create groups with diverse backgrounds, talents, abilities, perspectives, and so forth. The results of an experiment suggest that for certain task types, social engineering and groups can be more effective than random assignments or self-selection.