| Abstract: | Collins and Guetzkow's (1964) assembly bonus effect—in which effective interaction is held to allow group members to combine their individual knowledge in a manner that produces higher quality outcomes than would have been attributable to a combination of individual members' efforts—has been the subject of reductionist critiques that hold that a group will perform, at best, only as well as the sum of its parts. Pavitt's (2003) critique of group memory models and research is evidence that the debate between reductionism and the existence of an assembly bonus effect has expanded from the field of psychology to the field of communication. I posit that the lack of evidence supporting an assembly bonus effect may be due, at least in part, to a failure to conceptualize and operationalize communication's role in an appropriate way. Scholars in our field should continue to investigate process gains or the assembly bonus effect from a communication perspective because we have something to contribute to the debate that has heretofore been neglected. |
