Information Sharing, Cognitive Centrality, and Influence among Business Executives during Collective Choice

Susanne Abele, S.I. Vaughan-Parsons and G. Stasser

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Laboratory studies have shown that decision-making groups tend to focus on common information at the expense of unique information. In the current study, high level business executives completed a personnel selection task. Access to information about the candidates was not controlled as in a typical study of information sharing, but common, partially shared, and unique information arose naturally from the individual members’ information searches. During subsequent discussions, groups mentioned more common than partially shared than unique information. However, the underlying processes seemed to be different from what has been observed in laboratory studies. The popularity of information in the population from which groups were composed predicted both the number of a group’s members who accessed an item in their information searches and whether the group discussed the item. However, the number of group members who accessed an item did predict whether information was repeated during discussion, and repetition predicted which items were included on a final written summary. Finally, cognitively central group members were more influential than cognitively peripheral members.

Keywords: cognitive centrality; collective choice; group decision making; hidden profiles; information sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 L2 M M10 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-06-09
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