An Experimental Evaluation of Information Overload in a Production Environment

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experimental study of the relationship between the effectiveness of aggregate production planning decisions and the form of the information system used to support the decision making. The experiment, involving twenty two graduate business administration students devoting an entire week end to the decision making activity in a simulated, computer based environment, generated results showing significantly different performance according to the form in which information was presented. Decision makers given data summarized through the use of simple descriptive statistics (1) made higher quality decisions than those receiving the same data in standard formats, (2) had less confidence in the quality of their decisions, and (3) took longer to make their decisions.