Information acquisition during decisionmaking processes: an exploratory study of decision roles in media selection

This paper reports on a field study that explores; (1) how sources and media used by managers change over time and across decisional role as decision making processes unfold; and (2) how the rate of information acquisition affects media selection. The results indicate that: face-to-face meetings are favored for the entrepreneur and negotiator roles; other face-to-face media and telephone calls are employed to discharge resource allocator activities; the telephone is widely used in all roles, and the velocity of information acquisition influences media selection during the decision making process