This research had two main objectives: to determine how groups hold themselves together and make decisions over time, and to confront three key issues that have traditionally hindered research progress about group processes: First, what is the most useful way of conceptualizing and operationalizing the concept of “group process” to go beyond description to explanation? Second, can Markov analysis be used to go beyond description and move toward explaining group processes, and if so, what conceptual framework would be most useful to accomplish this goal? Third, how can we use explanations of processes to begin building theories of communication that are rooted in interaction structure? To accomplish these objectives, several group discussions were modeled as a structural‐functional system, and Markov analysis was used to test the extent to which the discussions fit the system model. Finally, the results of the study were discussed concerning their ability to build theories of communic