Overcoming Bias in the Deliberations of Distributed Teams

Abstract

Human decision making is subject to a variety of cognitive and affective processes that can significantly impact the nature and quality of the resulting decisions. While commonly referred to as decision making ‘biases’, these processes evolved to satisfy important needs of our genetic ancestors. For example, heuristics that reduce the time and effort required to make decisions may be beneficial in a naturalistic environment that rewards speed and efficiency over precision or perfection. Unfortunately, the modern world has different performance criteria and our cognitive processes have not evolved fast enough to adapt. One example is the geographically distributed team, composed of individuals who communicate using technologies such as email, telephone, and videoconferencing to accomplish business-related objectives. While speed remains important in this environment, precision and accuracy are often the most relevant performance metrics. This paper presents a detailed description of several cognitive and affective processes that are particularly troublesome for geographically distributed teams when deliberating to reach a team consensus and outlines some technological and procedural interventions that can improve the quality of their decision making.