Small groups are common in the everyday life. They are crucial in many ways to their members. For the purpose of this task, it will analyze small group communication by considering the movie: The Italian job. This movie involves a group of expert thieves led by Charlie. They perfectly pull a heist of 35 million dollars’ worth of gold in Venice, Italy. One of the guys, Steve, betrays the group and decides to get away with the gold for himself (Vito, 2012).
The surviving group members create a smart plan to revenge and get the gold back one year later in Los Angles. A safecracker Stella decided to follow the traitor to California to re-steal the gold back later joined Charlie, Wheelman handsome Rob, expert Left-Ear, computer genius Lyle and safecracker John Bridger. They planned to tap into Los Angeles’ traffic control system by manipulating the traffic lights creating one of the biggest traffic jams in L.A history (NYT review, 1993).
From the theory of small group communication, the members were advantaged in many ways in their plan to bring the gold back to their hands. Charlie came from a rich family meaning he could afford to provide money for the expedition, and experienced thugs, the safecracker and the computer guru provided the expertise. Sharing of individual experiences and information enables the group to accomplish their ‘Italian job’. The group enabled them to work towards achieving certain laid down concepts, tasks and targets for their common good. Their core reason for forming the group was to re-steal the loot.
Diversification of their abilities, talents and expertise, enabled them to contribute willingly and easily to execute their plans. For instance, Charlie demonstrates outstanding leadership skills to the members of the group. He is able to assemble them, give roles, produce material needs, solve their internal wrangles and contribute well in their decisions. He is a firm leader and keeps reminding the members of their roles and perfection. His courage incites the others to the dangerous mission.
On the other hand, Stella proves to be highly reliable in unlocking safe codes. She is not sure of the make, but John Bridger who happens to have done it a couple of times before fills the gap. Diversification instills a lot of creativity in their operation, for instance, Stella realizes that the safe could not be opened by tools alone but quickly uses her hand (a trick she had learned from her father).
The group in the movie exhibits all primary features of small group communication: they have a well-laid task where they show interdependence and maintain a healthy group size. Without a task, group formation would not have taken place. Interdependence of the group is demonstrated when they reach Los Angeles. They are all aware that a small mistake by either member would cause problems to the whole group and so they all remain focused on their assigned roles.
A large group would result in social loafing that is, the power and effect of a member would be reduced every time the group expanded its size. An increase would also lead to increased chances of conflicts and thus prolong their decisions. There is also a likelihood of copying unnecessary habits from many group members. Charlie seems to reckon all these potential problems when he insists during their last meeting that ‘he only needs the right number’.
Task 2
Although the group manages to achieve their plans, they faced challenges. They would have improved their operations by adapting some secondary features of small groups. At first, leadership within the group fails to instill norms to all their members, there were no straight procedures to punish offenders. For that reason, Steve manages to be egocentric enough to steal the whole loot yet they had acquired it as a group. Their procedural norms were poorly defined, but luckily, Charlie corrects the problem later when he outlays how they will divide the fortune once they get it back from Los Angeles (Vito, 2012).
Successful small groups have unique identities. For example, most football teams are identified by the color of their uniforms. A similar mission, that is, robbery, only identifies the group at first but their identity remained concealed. Perhaps that is the reason Steve manages to cheat them and return to America. Perfectly managed groups combine both their additive and their conjugative tasks. Additive tasks refer to the individual working on one task on behalf of the group while the conjunctive task is the combined mission of all group members to accomplish an agreed task. This at first works well since every member in the group had a defined role to take.
Their conjunctive task also succeeds but they neither could nor reap the fruits of their teamwork since their interdependence. Cohesiveness is key to successful small groups. It is fascinating to note that although hidden agendas are never tolerated in group missions, the Italian job was doomed to fail since some members like Steve already had set their minds elsewhere (Vito, 2012).
In conclusion, the group managed to possess their loot simply because they observed certain fundamental requirements for successful small groups. Their common interest brought them together, although they had failed in benefiting from their initial job, and they later strongly solidified their union and regained their loot. The movie ends in a dilemma. The audience is not sure whether the group terminated its mission. After the splitting up, they might regroup again to steal from sophisticated yet pregnable safes (NYT review, 1993).
References
NYT FILM REV. (1993). The New York times film reviews, 1991-1992. New York: Times Books/Garland Pub.
Vito, G. (2012). Criminology: theory, research, and policy. Sudbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning.