The purpose of this paper is to examine how the environment surrounding a decision-making event affects whether decision-makers consider the credibility of their advisors and take their advice.
In two experiments, the characteristics of the event and credibility of the advisor were manipulated, the extent to which participants considered the information from the advisor was measured, and whether participants took advice was determined.
Decision-makers are more likely to take advice from advisors when the decision-making event is of low urgency or high criticality because they are more likely to consider information provided by high-credibility advisors.
Within organizations, decision-makers may be making suboptimal decisions when faced with highly urgent decisions or decisions with low criticality. This study suggests that under these conditions, decision-makers are less likely to consider the information provided by high-credibility advisors. Organizations may consider encouraging decision-makers to override their tendency to disregard advice from credible advisors.
This study introduces a contextual factor relevant to managers, event characteristics, which has an effect on whether decision-makers take advice. A unique experimental design was utilized in which credibility was manipulated across two studies with an explicit (Study 1: resume) vs implicit (Study 2: video) method, and advice-taking was measured with a decision that was clearly right or wrong.
