Behavioral and organizational research on advice-based decision making: A systematic review
Mon-A7-Talk I-01
Presented by: Juliane E. Kämmer
Advice plays an important role in how people make decisions in virtually all walks of life. Researchers, for instance, revise their work in response to their peers’ suggestions. Managers and CEOs seek expert advice before making important business decisions. As research on decision making has flourished in recent years, so has research on advice. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of this work, we conducted a systematic review of 143 empirical studies of advice-based decisions published in management or psychology journals between 2006 and 2020. We identified two distinct streams of literature. The first, behavioral research, features experimental research on advice-based decisions conducted in laboratories. The second, organizational research, features observational field research on advice-based decisions in organizations. We organized the findings from the two research streams around three sequential stages: advice solicitation and provision, advice utilization, and the outcomes of advice-based decisions. Our review reveals the two streams to be highly complementary—with behavioral research focusing primarily on advice utilization and organizational research focusing primarily on advice solicitation. We identify key challenges for future research, such as greater emphasis on the social aspects of advice-based decisions and the continued development and refinement of normative benchmarks. In the talk, we will provide an overview of studies on advice-based decisions conducted over the last 15 years in behavioral and organizational research.
Keywords: advice taking, advice giving, psychology, management, organizational behavior