A Question of Timing: The Impact of Information Acquisition on Group Decision Making

Information acquisition and its use frequently are considered critical to the decision-making process, yet related research, especially about the timing of information acquisition, is limited. Our research explores the impact of information acquisition on perceived decision quality and on the time required to reach a decision on a fuzzy task. We found that more information was accessed from a Web-based system in the first part of the group decision-making process, when the decision environment was searched and possible courses of action were analyzed. We also found that the proportion of information accessed in the first part of the meeting was related significantly to the time required to make the decision. More specifically, when most information was accessed in the first part of the decision-making session, the relationship between decision time and amount of information accessed in the early part of the meeting was positive and linear. However, a curvilinear relationship was found between decision time and amount of information accessed in the latter part of the decision-making session. Unlike the findings of a previous study, this earlier access of information is not associated with improved perceived decision quality.