Groups, some people love them and some people hate them. But, in this day and age more and more work is centered around groups -especially campus group work. Groups have their benefits such as more diversity of opinion, providing expert leader support, and decisions being more widely accepted.

But when it comes to numbers, a group too large can be detrimental. Groups larger than ten are usually counterproductive. When it comes to groups for action-centered tasks, the smaller groups perform better.  And with problem solving tasks groups that are larger - but no larger than ten- perform better.

There are also two phenomena to be wary of when working with groups, group shift and group think. Group shift is when the decisions of the group are more conservative or more risk taking than if the decisions were made individually by the group members. Group think is when a certain idea is thought to have reached consensus without actually discussing other ideas critically in order to minimize conflict.

Realize that groups are not perfect and that they may not always be the preferred method to do work. Utilize them with discretion, but don’t avoid them completely. 

Information is based on Organizational Behaviour concepts. 
Book: Robins & Judge. Essentials of Organization Behaviour, 2010.