Participation function
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When a person tries to evaluate if a participation in a group is worthwhile, he takes in to consideration several factors. He will first see if the group is serving his purposes. Can the group promote his ideological needs (sum of all needs)? Can it serve his social needs (Masslow3,4)? Can it help him on his professional achievements (Masslow 1,2,3,4)?
He will then ask how much the group is already promoting the needs. He will try to invest minimum resources to get maximum benefits. He will look for the most effective group he observe to promote his needs.
If a group seems to be worthwhile, he will try to join. More beneficial groups may have a selective barrier, block people who do not promote the goals of the group. If he have to invest, he will invest, as long as it is cost-effective.
If the group serves his needs perfectly, he will go along the lines of the group with minimal resources.
If he observes that the group do not follow perfectly his needs, and he want to improve the group behavior then he might think of getting into the group decision making group. He may think if it entering the group is beneficial to him. Group Decision making is very complex process and may take a lot of resources. I suggest that people uses the following function To decide whether to enter into decision making process.
Decision influence
The ability to influence in an equal decision making system, time must be divided by group participants. As more people enter into the decision making group, the relative time shared by other members is reduced by (n^2)/2 (See the problem of coordination). So the larger the group, the relative time to influence diminishes in an exponential rate.
If the group have strong decision makers (when some members of the group have more influence on the group), they may take more time resources and their ability to influence in this time is much bigger (due to legitimacy or acknowledgment, or subordination effects), and thus the new comers will have less time and influence, so most of them will be disencoreged to participate.
To solve this problem, many weaker decision makers will try to get more friendly with main decision makers, to influance the decision of the main decision makers (look for the price edvisors in Michavlli, Advisers (And "friends". Theis create the very femiler phenomena of ass leakers).
to be continued....