Advice taking and decision-making: An integrative literature review, and implications for the organizational sciences

Abstract

This paper reviews the advice-giving and advice-taking literature. First, the central findings from this literature are catalogued. Topics include: advice utilization, confidence, decision accuracy, and differences between advisors and decision-makers. Next, the implications of several variations of the experimental design are discussed. These variations include: the presence/absence of a pre-advice decision, the number of advisors, the amount of interaction between the decision-maker and the advisor(s) and also among advisors themselves, whether the decision-maker can choose if and when to access advice, and the type of decision-task. Several ways of measuring advice utilization are subsequently contrasted, and the conventional operationalization of “advice” itself is questioned. Finally, ways in which the advice literature can inform selected topics in the organizational sciences are discussed.