Information acquisition in group decision making

This study focused on accessing information during group decision making across traditional face-to-face and group support systems (GSS) environments for two different types of tasks. It also explored the impact of varying access patterns on the quality of the group decisions in a laboratory experiment. Findings indicate that individuals in GSS groups accessed information significantly more often; however, access patterns varied across meeting conditions and tasks. Contrary to expectations, GSS groups accessed information later in the decision-making process, while traditional groups accessed it earlier. When working on a task with a best answer (i.e, an intellective task), groups sought information later. On a judgmental task (i.e. cognitive conflict task), groups tended to seek information earlier in the decision-making process. Finally information accessed late in the decision-making process appeared detrimental to decision quality for the cognitive conflict task. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.