ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF COMMITTEE

ADVANTAGES OF COMMITTEE

1.  Committees help to bring together a variety of views, interest and expertise together for completion of a task.

2.  Committees provide a mechanism for discussion and agreements based on consideration of a wider range of interest and alternatives.

3.  Committee enable for the use of specialized manpower or expertise for a specific task. By permitting such experts to work part time on the committees.

4.  Committees avoid the mistakes of hasty decisions taken without due consideration.

5.  Decision taken by committee are more likely and easily accepted by the all

departments of an organization because of representation of their interest and viewpoint in the decision making process by way of their representative working on the committee.

DISADVANTAGES OF COMMITTEE

1.  Committee dilute the responsibility for a task. No single person can be held responsible for poor result produced by committee

2.  Members of the committee have dual loyalties towards their parent department and towards the committee. Because of this, the meetings of committee can degenerate into a battle ground for conflicting interests of different departments, rather than a forum for joint action.

3.  Work in a committee being a part time and an additional responsibility beyond normal responsibilities within parent department, members of the committee may not take the work or task of the committee very seriously.

4.  Committee take too much time to decide and act because committee often work part time and the discussion and decision in meetings of the committees is a time consuming process. Many times, committees delay taking decision as they are not able to reach at a consensus.

5.  Committee in addition to causing delay in decision and action, also cause waste of time of people working on the committee.

6.  Decisions of committee are frequently in the nature of recommendations and therefore cannot be enforced easily in the organization. Decisions of committees often lack the authority of decisions taken at the higher level of management within the regular organization structure.

7.  Breeding ground for yes-men: even though we often believe that committees are usually made up of equals, it is a fact of life that authorities can rarely be effectively exercised on group basis. One person probably the chairman often directs deliberation and led the rest into saying “yes” to his view. This is true especially where there is indecisiveness. There is the tendency for members to scatter or regroup in smaller units whenever indecision prevails. This group becomes opposing units to one another and the end result is a total disintegration of the committee, or self-destruction and anarchy.

REFERENCE

Bernadine O. Ezezue (2007 Fundamentals of Business   Communication.

Wikipedia, E. Notes, Google.com, Ask.com

McLeod (2008) management information education