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Collaboration In Twelve Angry Men

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The film Twelve Angry Men, released in 1957, is based on a play by Reginald Rose of the same title. This is a fascinating examination of a small group communication, the transitive process of creating meaning with people who share a common purpose. Rose’s story puts the American judicial system on trial and comments on prejudices that were socially revenant in the 1950’s. The interaction between twelve diverse jurors brought together to decide the fate of a young defendant in what appears as an open-and-shut trial has become an American classic and is considered a demonstration of our legal system.
The group communication concepts I’ve selected that highlight important themes in the film are: determining when collaboration is needed, the functional …show more content…

When a mans life is at stake it calls for a jury due to this decision or task is to big for one person and needs a team effort to evaluate the evidence and agree on a verdict. The type of collaboration used in 12 Angry Men would be considered All Channel, a group in which everyone talks to everyone. Juror #1 did take the initiative and second as the forman of the group but all in all this was a Team based organization, an organization that has a flat structure rather then a heirochial one. In the beginning of the film when the judge provided instructions to the juroy you could tell in his voice that he was almost bored and felt that this was an irrelovent step to the prosacution and was just following protocol. Juror #8 had a huge impact in this film. Step by step he peieced apart the case against the defendant and evalualuating the evidence with the group from a different perspective, showing them things are not always what they seem. Resulting in a unified commitment, getting everyone on the same page and agreeing to a verdict. Without this collaboration processes in our judicial system it could cause allot of innocent people to end up behind …show more content…

These functions are goal function, analysis function, idea-generated function, evaluation function, and personal sensitivity function. The first step is goal function, for the team or group to have a clear goal. The goal in this film was to get 12 angry men to agree on a verdict, guilty or not guilty. The second step is the analysis function, to analyze the data, inforamation, or evidence that can help the group achieve the group goal. When juror #8 provided a not guilty decision many of the group members became upset. juror #7 made it clear to the group that he would like to get out of their quickly so he could attend the baseball game he had tickets for. This is a prime example of individual roles, behaviors that focus on an individual other then the group or task at hand. This behavior upsetter juror #8 due to the fact that a mans life is on the line and all he could focus on was missing a baseball game. Other jurors were content with providing a guilty decision due to being content with the argument made by the prosecution. Juror #8 pointed out that the murder wepon potrayed by the prosection as being a very rare knife was infact not rare at all. He purchused the same knife just blocks away from the defendants home. This swayed juror #9 to take a step back from his once guilty decision to agree there is reasonable doubt in this case. Another

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