Stepladder Technique - Applications

Applications

The stepladder technique has many potentially useful applications, notably in business, education and any general organisational context where people get together in order to make decisions. This technique has been tested mainly with 4-people groups. The research literature on group decision-making generally agrees that any decision-making group larger than 9 or 10 people starts losing productivity and quality of decisions, an effect due mainly to social loafing (free rider effect). This effect also exists in small groups but is less likely, and can be further reduced through the use of the stepladder technique.

A recent application for this technique has been with audioconferencing, as suggested in a 2002 study by Rogelberg, O'Connor and Sederburg. Consistent with research conducted on face-to-face groups, the stepladder technique was found to facilitate the decision-making performance of groups interacting via audioconference.