In the light of the information age, information overload research in new areas (e.g., social media, virtual collaboration) rises rapidly in many fields of research in business administration with a variety of methods and subjects. This review article analyzes the development of information overload literature in business administration and related interdisciplinary fields and provides a comprehensive and overarching overview using a bibliometric literature analysis combined with a snowball sampling approach. For the last decade, this article reveals research directions and bridges of literature in a wide range of fields of business administration (e.g., accounting, finance, health management, human resources, innovation management, international management, information systems, marketing, manufacturing, or organizational science). This review article identifies the
major papers of various research streams to capture the pulse of the information overload-related research and suggest new questions that could be addressed in the future and identifies concrete open gaps for further research. Furthermore, this article presents a new framework for structuring information overload issues which extends our understanding of influence factors and effects of information overload in the decision-making process.
It has been suggested that information overload decreases decision-making performance. This study empirically examines the mediating role of information (over-)load on the relationships between two system features (deep structure usage and system quality) and managerial performance using a mixed-method-approach (survey and interviews). It analyzes the relationships with respect to a state-of-the-art decision support system (DSS). Our results indicate that information overload adversely affects managerial performance and mediates the influence of system quality and deep structure usage on managerial performance. We find that system quality is positively related to information overload. Drawing on cognitive load theory, we hypothesize and confirm that deep structure usage reduces perceived information overload. Additional evidence from interviews further illustrate these results and show that information overload can be influenced in counter-intuitive ways by system aspects. Our results have important implications for the design of modern information system (IS) landscapes to support managerial performance. They draw attention to the importance of information overload as a mediating factor in the interrelationship among deep structure usage, system quality and managerial performance.
This experimental study analyzes how a key factor, information load, influences decision making in escalation situations, i.e., in situations in which decision makers reinvest further resources in a losing course of action, even when accounting information indicates that the project is performing poorly and should be discontinued. This study synthesizes prior escalation research with information overload and investigates how different levels of information load influence the escalation of commitment. Our findings reveal a U-shaped effect of information load: When decision makers face negative feedback, a higher information load mitigates the escalation tendency up to a certain point. However, beyond this point, more information reinforces the escalation tendency. Moreover, we find that the type of feedback affects self-justification, and we find a negative and significant interaction between information load and self-justification in negative-feedback cases. Thus, studies investigating escalation of commitment should control for self-justification and information load when utilizing high levels of information load. Finally, in the positive-feedback condition, higher information load encourages decision makers to continue promising courses of action, i.e., increases decision-making performance.
This experimental study analyzes how a key factor, information load, influences decision making in escalation situations, i.e., in situations in which decision mak- ers reinvest further resources in a losing course of action, even when accounting information indicates that the project is performing poorly and should be discontin- ued. This study synthesizes prior escalation research with information overload and investigates how different levels of information load influence the escalation of com- mitment. Our findings reveal a U-shaped effect of information load: When decision makers face negative feedback, a higher information load mitigates the escalation tendency up to a certain point. However, beyond this point, more information rein- forces the escalation tendency. Moreover, we find that the type of feedback affects self-justification, and we find a negative and significant interaction between informa- tion load and self-justification in negative-feedback cases. Thus, studies investigat- ing escalation of commitment should control for self-justification and information load when utilizing high levels of information load. Finally, in the positive-feedback condition, higher information load encourages decision makers to continue promis- ing courses of action, i.e., increases decision-making performance.