Cohesion—A Definition

When the word cohesion is used in relation to groups, people are describing how closely tied together they are as a group. But the meaning of cohesion extends far beyond this. People in cohesive groups speak openly of themselves as "a little family." They often talk about their cohesion in spiritual and reverential ways. Members of military, sports, and work teams may use the word "cohesion" to describe a kind of intensified spiritual state of interpersonal connectedness or a special group "chemistry." When people experience cohesion in the groups they belong to, they speak as if they have been blessed with a special kind of strength that enables them to overcome great obstacles. The special strength provided by cohesion has not gone unnoticed by sociologists.

Sociologists have long used the idea of cohesion in studies of a variety of small groups. These studies have focused on cohesion in families, military units, sports teams, neighborhoods, church congregations, labor unions, street gangs, and especially small work groups. In this paper, I want to connect the idea of cohesion to wildland firefighting crews. Before I do so, it is important to discuss how cohesion became such a central concept in sociological studies.

Suicide—The Problem of Cohesion in Modern Human Groups

At the turn of the 20th century, French sociologist Emile Durkheim conducted a study of suicide (Durkheim 1897). He concluded that suicide rates vary inversely with the degree of social integration (cohesion) of people's groups. In other words, people belonging to groups with low cohesion had higher suicide rates than those who belonged to highly cohesive groups. He used the word "anomic," meaning "without rules" to describe groups with weak cohesion. His landmark study laid the groundwork for future sociological studies of cohesion in different kinds of groups.

Accidents and Cohesion in Forest Service Crews

In my studies of Forest Service field crews (Driessen 1986, 1996), I discovered that a modified version of Durkheim's proposition applied to accident rates. Accidents in field crews were inversely correlated with the cohesion in the crews. In other words, the greater the crew cohesion, the fewer the accidents. People working in cohesive field crews were fully aware that their cohesion helped protect them from dangers inherent in the work. I listened to workers and their supervisors describe work practices that fostered their cohesion. Generally they talked about the importance of staying focused on good production and how this focus depended on physical fitness, work skills, safety awareness, interpersonal harmony, and good supervision.

Perhaps the most important discovery I made in these studies is this:

Crew cohesion is "made" by individual workers themselves when they establish agreements about the rules that govern a host of their day-to-day work practices.

I found that members of cohesive crews talk frankly with one another about their ongoing expectations. These expectations govern such things as work pace, rest periods, decisionmaking, humor, warnings of danger, requests for help, assistance for fellow crewmembers, complaints, sharing food, and other practical matters that bear directly on maintaining their cohesion. Cohesion, and the protection it affords individual workers, comes about only after crews have tested and negotiated acceptable norms governing their work practices. It takes time for this cohesion to develop. In my studies, I found it takes from 6 to 8 weeks for individual seasonal workers to "click" into crews. When this happened, individual workers bonded into intracohesive crews. They were filled with pride about their production and trusted one another like a "little family" (Driessen 1986, 1996).