Social responsibility and stakeholder influence: Does technology matter during stakeholder deliberation with high-impact decisions?

When organizations face potentially threatening situations, stakeholders with diverse viewpoints influence decision-making processes and outcomes using different communication media. We apply theories from social influence, group polarization, majority–minority influence and deindividuation to investigate how computer-mediated communication (CMC) affects stakeholders’ decisions, satisfaction, and personal preferences. Our experiment finds that CMC is a viable alternative to face-to-face (FTF) deliberation involving judgment tasks. Stakeholders in CMC deliberation did not compromise their personal conviction, whereas stakeholders in FTF deliberation were more influenced by opposing positions. Stakeholders in both media conditions made similar group choices, but reported higher satisfaction in FTF deliberation or holding majority position.