What is cohesiveness?

The Impact of Cohesiveness On Behavior

“Cohesiveness” describes one of the maintenance variables of groups. When people have a similar task or situation the group bonds on at least a superficial level in order to accomplish the task at hand. However, cohesiveness can be found in groups sharing similar traits rather than tasks. A group of students share in the same commonality of being a student and might bond on this similarity. Cohesive groups have a general perception of “we”. There is a feeling of friendship and loyalty among group members. The group also has high morale.

In order to be successful a group needs to be cohesive. This statement may seem problematic when thought of in a broad sense. For instance, Americans, as a group have been successful at building a strong country. However, one could say that because of the pluralistic state of the country that groups are not cohesive and disagree often. Yet, somehow the groups have managed to be successful on the whole. On a smaller scale, a work group at a company needs to be cohesive in order to be successful for the simple reason that a small group would find it impossible to accomplish common tasks if they were in disagreement. For these reasons I believe that groups must be cohesive in general to be successful.

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