makers were, presumably, entertained by communities trying to win the plant for their area. Thus executives would be influenced not only by the quantitative factors which a community offered, but also by the level of entertainment or attention that a community put into its effort to win the selection process.
GM also conducted its search in a very public forum, with the result that the company drew input that it would not have received if the search were conducted privately. As communities became aware that GM was searching for a site, and as the benefit of having a GM plant in a particular region became clear, communities which were not initially considered are likely to have made bids to be included in the selection process. This would have given the company many more alternatives than it would have had if the search were conducted privately.
However, the public nature of the deliberations also means that the company was subject to pressure not just from the communities themselves, but from shareholders who might be interested in a particular area, from employees concerned about having to relocate to assist with the new plant, and from Wall Street, which would consider the wisdom of the choice in terms of the rational factors (tax incentives and transportation logistics, for example) rather than the behavioral considerations. In this way, the public nature of the deliberations likely led to a more complicated decision making process than if the deliberations were conducted privately.
In this situation, groupthink and group polarization are both potential problems for the decision makers. Groupthink could arise as members of the group making the decision focus on the benefits (and drawbacks) of a particular community, and reinforce each others' positions. Since the decision makers are trying to build a new type of plant, there would seem to be incentive to use different criteria than used in the past; however, the decis...