The Dynamics of Intense Work Groups: A Study of British String Quartets

This paper focuses on the effects of internal group dynamics on the effectiveness of intense work teams, in this case, professional string quartets in Great Britain.In particular, we studied the effects of a group's strategies for coping with four important paradoxes: Leadership versus democracy, the paradox of the second violinist, the means for conflict resolution, and similarity versus diversity.Qualitative and quantitative data differentiated clearly between the the more and less successful quartets.