Richard Watson will present “A Theory of Information Compression: When Judgments are Costly” published recently at ISR. Richard will present at Quark, while the participants will have the option to be either physically present at Quark as a group or join the presentation online.
Abstract: A theory of information compression (TIC) conceptualizes how anticipated judgment costs can affect decision quality We theorize—inductively from decision-making in medicine, energy pricing, auditing, and financial analytics—how judgment networks can exacerbate financial and non-financial judgment costs that compress information. Information compression occurs when a process intended to inform decision-making generates information that has little variation. This can reduce decision quality and market efficiency. We offer potential remedies to mitigate the adverse societal consequences. We use complementary theoretical perspectives to nomologically contextualize how information compression arises. We introduce an information compression measure based on information entropy. TIC’s theoretical crux is that the expansion of a judgment network’s publicness exacerbates information compression by increasing judgment costs for some entities in a judgment network. We close with future research ideas on TIC’s core propositions and its broader theoretical implications for IS research.
Short bio: Richard Watson is a Regents Professor and the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. He is a former president of the Association for Information Systems and was awarded its highest honor, a LEO, for his achievements in information systems. For about a decade, he was the research director for the Advanced Practices Council of the Society of Information Management and a visiting researcher at the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE). His most recent book is Capital, Systems, and Objects. ORCID: 0000-0003-0664-8337.
Date and time: December 16, 1300-1430
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