School of Economics and Management Tsinghua U., China
In organizations, critical decisions made by individuals often must go to committee before being finalized, but does having a team revise an individual’s initial judgment actually improve decision quality? Contrasting traditional judge-advisor systems (JAS), where an individual judge has the final say on whether or not to integrate advisor input, this study examines the phenomenon of team revisions, where a team revises an individual’s initial judgment. Drawing on team decision-making research, we hypothesize that team revisions generally improve decision quality by integrating new knowledge, but that this effect is contingent on team knowledge availability and implementation factors, specifically with regard to team members’ knowledge diversity and status, respectively. Using a unique dataset of financial analyst forecasts in China, we find that team revisions significantly improve forecast accuracy, with team knowledge diversity positively moderating and the initial judge’s status negatively moderating this effect. Importantly, status, but not knowledge diversity, influences the likelihood of revision occurrence, highlighting the heightened importance of implementation challenges in the revision process. Our findings contribute to the decision-making literature by elucidating the value and contingencies of team revisions. By exploring how collective knowledge access and implementation shape decision outcomes, we offer novel insights for effective team revision design and decision processes in organizations.
