Judgment and Decision Making in Teams

Abstract

As organizations increasingly adopt team-based systems, team judgment and decision making are often preferred ways of making decisions compared to individual decision making. Teams are considered to have a greater potential to make a higher quality decision compared to individuals because teams can utilize a larger pool of information, team members can correct each other’s error, and team discussion can facilitate team processes that enhance team outcomes such as learning. Team judgment and decision making, however, are known to be subject to potential pitfalls such as polarization, common knowledge bias, and conformity pressures. This article summarizes team judgment and decision making from an information processing perspective in which information distributed among team members and interaction dynamics among team members (i.e., discussion, deliberation) determine the mechanisms whereby distributed information is expressed and elaborated and whereby it influences the ultimate team decision or judgment as discussed in The Emerging Conceptualization of Groups as Information Processors. Accordingly, studies on team judgment and decision making focus on processes whereby team members reach a team decision or judgment and the different factors that could make the team processes more effective. The current review attempts to achieve a balance in emphasis by including topics that are of interest both to academics as well as to practitioners of team judgment and decision making.