How Are Distributed Groups Affected by an Imposed Structuring of their Decision-Making Process?

Groups often suffer from ineffective communication and decision making. This experimental study compares distributed groups solving a preference task with support from either a communication system or a system providing both communication and a structuring of the decision-making process. Results show that groups using the latter system spend more time solving the task, spend more of their time on solution analysis, spend less of their time on disorganized activity, and arrive at task solutions with less extreme preferences. Thus, the type of system affects the decision-making process as well as its outcome. Notably, the task solutions arrived at by the groups using the system that imposes a structuring of the decision-making process show limited correlation with the task solutions suggested by the system on the basis of the groups’ explicitly stated criteria. We find no differences in group influence, consensus, and satisfaction between groups using the two systems.