Aids to Audience Decision Making 177- Meeting face-to-face at the beginning of an engagement.^335 The more a dispersed group relies
on electronic technologies for communication, the more challenging it is for them to identify
who knows what.^336- Instructing the group to explicitly state its objectives^337 and framing the group’s task as a prob-
lem to be solved.^338 Groups given a problem/solution frame pay more attention to decision
criteria that are critical for identifying the best alternative.^339- Asking group members to keep a record of their discussions. Group performance improves
when one of the group members keeps a record of the information discussed by the group.^340
Group members are unlikely to recall any new information not previously shared by all unless
it is written down.^341- Encouraging group members to think critically,^342 to listen actively,^343 and to speak up when
they notice errors or missing information.^344 Critical thinking skills can help group members
correct erroneous intuitive decisions^345 and are positively correlated with better decision making
and decisiveness.^346 Studies of top management teams solving strategy problems show their criti-
cal thinking skills are positively correlated with superior firm performance.^347 Moreover, critical
thinking skills can even compensate for a lack of domain expertise in many tasks.^348- Eliciting and legitimizing dissenting views^349 and encouraging group leaders to refrain from
promoting their preferred solutions.^350 Encouraging the expression of opposing viewpoints
promotes critical thinking, information search, creative thinking, and leads teams to make bet-
ter decisions.^351 Asking group members to examine the other side’s arguments can bring out
contradictory evidence overlooked in their own holistic assessments.^352- Making group members aware of the need to look for unshared information^353 and having the
leader repeat information that is unshared.^354 More unshared information also becomes avail-
able when group members rank order decision alternatives rather than simply choose one.^355- Requiring group members to evaluate and justify their decisions and their decision-making
process.^356 Holding the group accountable not so much for the outcome, as for the process by
which they generate their decisions, leads to better decisions.^357Aids to Information Integration
As audience members acquire enough information to start making comparisons among alterna-
tives, they begin to integrate that information. The information integration process is aided when
documents and presentations contain only highly relevant information in limited amounts. Too
much information can actually decrease the accuracy of the audience’s decision. Too much infor-
mation can decrease the audience’s confi dence in their decision as well.^358
A Limited Number of Alternatives
Audiences fi nd integrating or combining information to be easier when they are not given too
many alternatives to choose among. A study of prospective home buyers choosing among differ-
ent houses varied the number of alternative houses from 5 to 25.^359 Buyers reported experiencing
information overload and made signifi cantly fewer optimal choices when the number of alternative
houses reached 10.
In a study that varied choice rules as well as the number of alternatives, audience members wereasked to use either the lexicographic, conjunctive, or averaging choice rule to decide among either 2, 6,
or 10 alternatives. Across all three choice rules audiences made fairly accurate decisions when deciding
between 2 alternatives but they were much less accurate when deciding among 6 or 10 alternatives.^360
Having to choose among many different alternatives is not only diffi cult for audience members,it also depletes the cognitive resources they need to make subsequent decisions. When home buy-
ers have to evaluate many different properties, they subsequently devote less attention to choosing