No decision-maker is an Island: integrating expert advice with information acquisition

Abstract

The present research examined the social context of information acquisition. The main purpose was to examine how decision-makers' information acquisition processes changed when they were provided access to expert advice. Results indicated that all decision-makers opted to acquire advice; however, they typically did so only after completing over 75% of their own information search. Decision-makers agreed more with the advice as task complexity increased, but, in general, searched information in two stages-i.e., a pre-advice ''hypothesis generation'' stage and a post-advice ''hypothesis testing'' stage. To behave in an adaptive manner, decision-makers could have used expert advice either to increase their decision accuracy or to reduce their effort expenditure (or both); they chose the former. Implications and further extensions are discussed.

The relative influence of advice from human experts and statistical methods on forecast adjustments

“…Also the forecasting tasks in Study 2, involving two sources of advice was clearly more complex than the tasks in the first study. Schrah et al (2006) found that people discount advice less when the task is more complex, and it may be that in such situations people are equally prepared to use expert or statistical model-based advice. Given these possibilities, future research could systematically encourage different levels of trust and/or systematically control levels of task difficulty to examine their specific effects on taking advice from multiple sources.…”

Complexity of the Strategic Level and Tactical Level Disaster Management Tasks: Activity System Analysis Through the Lens of Information Behaviour

“…These are work tasks, assignments for school etc., all of which are influenced by the task requirements, a timetable and information quality (Byström, 2007). Moreover, in real life settings, organisational members need information, subject to task complexity and time constraints, to solve problems and complete the tasks in a satisfactory way (Schrah, Dalal, & Sniezek, 2006).…”

“…They use their domain expertise while searching for information and using that information in the decision-making process. The decision makers favour searching for expert advice when task complexity exists (Schrah et al, 2006). In this regard, expert information is used to reduce the effort for information search and ensure the accuracy of the decision.…”

“…The advice of an expert is perceived as a recommendation and it is distinguished from task information, as mentioned in the previous section. In this situation, recommendations are the summary of the task information and consist of evaluations (Schrah et al, 2006). As a result, task complexity increases information need, the requirement for expert information and the required time to solve the problem, while it decreases decision quality and the quality of information seeking (Vakkari, 1999b;Byström & Jarvelin, 1995).…”

On the evolution of professional consulting

“…The literature on Judge-Advisor Systems (see, e.g., the review by Bonaccio and Dalal, 2006) provides insights on when, why, and to which extent advice is implemented. For example, clients are more likely to follow advice when they are less knowledgeable than their advisor (e.g., Harvey and Fischer, 1997), when advice is solicited rather than provided without request (Gibbons et al, 2003), when tasks are complex (Schrah et al, 2006), when advice is accurate, and when the goals of clients and advisors are aligned (Schotter, 2003).…”