Waiting for information: what can actually change the decision
Requesting further analysis often seems more prudent than deciding on the evidence already available. Yet the precise management question is this: should a choice be postponed when every possible answer to the outstanding question would lead to the same action?
What the literature establishes
Anthony Bastardi and Eldar Shafir (1998, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed, in experimental settings, that participants seek information that should not alter their choice. Once obtained, this information can nevertheless influence the decision, contrary to what the choices of participants given it from the outset would suggest. Seeking information is therefore not simply a neutral step: it can change the weight assigned to an element of the case.
Uncertainty can block an otherwise stable choice
Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir (1992, Psychological Science) studied situations in which an option is preferred when one possible outcome is known, but also when the opposite outcome is known. That preference can disappear when the outcome remains unknown: this is the disjunction effect. In their examination scenario, knowing that one had passed or failed could provide different reasons for choosing the same holiday, whereas uncertainty encouraged postponing the choice.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that managers should stop requesting information as soon as they have a decision in mind. These studies do not justify that rule: information can alter an action, its implementation conditions or its compliance status without changing the preferred option. The useful distinction concerns whether any answer could change what will be done, rather than how impatient the decision-maker feels. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the experiments cannot establish on their own
These studies examine bounded experimental choices, rather than tracking decisions in Geneva-based businesses. They do not allow us to quantify the cost of unnecessary requests in banking, diplomacy or industry. In practice, a request that appears unnecessary for choosing may also meet a documentation requirement or reveal a possibility missing from the initial framing.
A practical check in Genève
As part of SHR’s « Prise de décision » programme, one exercise is to examine, over a month, decisions postponed to obtain additional information in a private bank, an international organisation, a luxury watchmaking company or a commodity trading firm in Geneva. Before each request, record the plausible answers, the action planned for each and any regulatory or documentation requirement that justifies seeking the information. Then calculate the proportion of requests for which all recorded answers lead to the same action and no identified requirement makes the request necessary. This ratio, verifiable against the dated log, does not prove that these requests are useless: it identifies those whose value needs to be made explicit. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Decision-making in Geneva
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