Information Diversity and Repetitiveness Ingss Supported Cognitive Conflict Task:an Experimental Investigation

The issue of information dimension has not received enough attention in the group support systems (GSS) research. The major information dimensions are information diversity and information repetitiveness. Information overload is a function of the information dimensions. Prior research demonstrates that increasing information diversity and repetitiveness can have information overload effect on decision time in structured and unstructured tasks. Group tasks, such as cognitive conflict tasks involve the use of diverse and repetitive information cues. This paper discusses a research to examine the diversity and repetitiveness of information cues accessed by group decision makers engaged in cognitive conflict tasks. The study results demonstrated the negative effect of information diversity and information repetitiveness on decision time. The research further explores whether the use of a collective memory can influence the extent of diverse and repetitive information cues accessed by the group decision makers.