It's the Thought that Counts: The Mediating Effects of Information Processing in Virtual Team Decision Making

Abstract

Previous research shows that although collaboration technology can improve the exchange of information during team decision making, one of the challenges is that this better discussion often does not lead to better decisions. In this paper, we investigate the impact of individual information processing on team decision making. We investigated the effects of two types of collaboration technology when participants were either the member of a team majority or a team minority. There was little impact due to the majority/minority, but the use of collaboration technology that required users to categorize the comments they received from others resulted in increased information processing, which in turn led to better decisions and more satisfied participants.

Keywords:

• collaboration technology
• information exchange
• information sharing
• information processing
• hidden profile
• majority
• minority
• decision making