Solidarity as an Antecedent of Consensus Decision-Making: A Mixed-Mode Study

December 3, 2025

Solidarity as an Antecedent of Consensus Decision-Making: A Mixed-Mode Study

Susan K. Hares | 2022

Abstract

Research by Koster and Sanders (2006) into alternatives to Organizational Citizen Behavior (OCB) found solidarity was a possible alternate concept to OCB. This longitudinal mixed-mode study examined whether solidarity and conflict were antecedents to effective team consensus decision-making in the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), a virtual top management team (TMT) of the IETF. The IETF is a standards development organization (SDO) that has developed Internet technology standards since 1987. This research examined the IESG consensus decision-making in the 28 years of consensus decision-making from 1989 to 2016 from five different viewpoints (three different types of historical data and two surveys). Historiometric best practices guided the collection and IPA analysis of the historical data and the open-ended questions from the surveys. IPA analysis examined 3,458 group consensus decisions for group behaviors, with over 39.186 individual behavioral patterns consisting of 1 or more of the behaviors studied. The researcher surveyed all IESG members in 2013 and 2017. Every step of the five-strand methodology used triangulation (data triangulation, data collection, method triangulation in the analysis process [within-method and between-method], and theory triangulation). This web of triangulation used a majority strategy to resolve differences. This research concluded that solidarity was an antecedent to effective team consensus decision-making. Increases in solidarity behaviors in the TMT might increase the effectiveness of consensus decisions in team consensus decision-making. This research examined conflict based on the Jehn’s (1999) Intragroup Conflict Scale, concluding that conflict (task and relationship) correlated to effective consensus decision-making. However, the exact nature between conflict and effective consensus decision-making was complex. Relationship conflict was minimized in the publicly available IETF historical records, slightly dampened in the survey, and expressed in-depth in a set of open-ended questions on conflict. Future researchers may continue to examine the interplay of solidarity and conflict in the IESG and other TMTs in other organizations.

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