A critical examination of the concept of decision making or consensus that has held sway in thinking about groups since its introduction in the 1930s. As a part of the group dynamics movement, the concept of consensus was accepted perhaps without adequate reflection regarding its nature and utility as a way of thinking about and teaching about group process.The authors carefully define the concept, trace it historically, and critically evaluate its merit to create an understanding of what happens when groups of people come together to work things out. The contributors are William K. Rawlins, Randy Y. Hirokawa, Nancy Wyatt, Lynne Kelly, Cynthia F. Begnal, Christopher Waagen, Susan L. Kline, Janet M. Ceropski, and Paul G. Friedman.The result of their studies is the recognition that consensus is a concept, not an entity or a state of being. While an important concept that is useful as a critical tool, it must be treated as a conceptan abstraction created and used by those who wish to study how people reach collective agreements."