Coercing into Completeness in Financial Advisory Service Encounters

In this article, we report on design insights found during the evaluation of an innovative IT-artifact to support financial service encounters. Relating to previous work in this field, we carefully designed the artifact to omit any visualization and enforcement of rigid process structures, as those had turned out to be harmful. Our main design element was a mind-map-like content hierarchy to capture the client's situation. Surprisingly, we noticed that both clients and advisors talked about every information item visible on the screen just for the sake of completeness. They also followed a sequential process apparently inferred from the content hierarchy. We call this phenomenon "coercing into completeness". This phenomenon negatively influences the conversation between client and advisor inducing shorter discussion units and sudden, incomprehensible topic shifts. This article contributes an exploration of this phenomenon and its effects on the collaborative setting.

[1]  Brad A. Myers,et al.  The importance of percent-done progress indicators for computer-human interfaces , 1985, CHI '85.

[2]  British Journal of Sociology , 1950, Nature.

[3]  K. Eisenhardt.  Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review , 1989 .

[4]  Samir Chatterjee,et al.  A Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research , 2008 .

[5]  C. Skinner,et al.  An empirical analysis of interspersal research evidence, implications and applications of the discrete task completion hypothesis. , 2002 .

[6]  Alan R. Hevner,et al.  POSITIONING AND PRESENTING DESIGN SCIENCE RESEARCH FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT 1 , 2013 .

[7]  E. Hippel.  Sticky Information and the Locus of Problem Solving: Implications for Innovation , 1994 .

[8]  Gerhard Schwabe,et al.  Enabling relationship building in tabletop-supported advisory settings , 2014, CSCW.

[9]  B. Zeigarnik.  On finished and unfinished tasks. , 1938 .

[10]  Helmut Jungermann,et al.  Advice giving and taking , 1999, Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. 1999. HICSS-32. Abstracts and CD-ROM of Full Papers.

[11]  Améziane Aoussat,et al.  Computer-Supported Creativity: Evaluation of a Tabletop Mind-Map Application , 2007, HCI.

[12]  A Gafni,et al.  The physician-patient encounter: the physician as a perfect agent for the patient versus the informed treatment decision-making model. , 1998, Social science & medicine.

[13]  Terry Winograd,et al.  Categories, disciplines, and social coordination , 1997, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[14]  Inu Sarah,et al.  “ Enforced ” vs . “ casual ” transparency-Findings from IT-supported financial advisory encounters , 2017 .

[15]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory , 1994 .

[16]  Lucy A. Suchman,et al.  Do categories have politics? , 1993, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[17]  Alan R. Hevner,et al.  Design Science in Information Systems Research , 2004, MIS Q..

[18]  Robert O. Briggs,et al.  On Expanding the Scope of Design Science in IS Research , 2011, DESRIST.

[19]  A. Kellerman,et al.  The Constitution of Society : Outline of the Theory of Structuration , 2015 .

[20]  Paul P. Tallon.  A Service Science Perspective on Strategic Choice, IT, and Performance in U.S. Banking , 2010, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[21]  Robert O. Briggs,et al.  Collaboration Engineering: Designing Repeatable Processes for High-Value Collaborative Tasks , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[22]  Philipp Nussbaumer.  Essays on transparent IT support for asymmetric client-advisor encounters: the case of Swiss investment advisory services , 2012 .

[23]  Susanne Schmidt-Rauch,et al.  Putting value co-creation into practice: a case for advisory support , 2011, ECIS.

[24]  Jasminko Novak,et al.  Mine, Yours... Ours? Designing for Principal-Agent Collaboration in Interactive Value Creation , 2009, Wirtschaftsinformatik.

[25]  C. Prahalad,et al.  Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation , 2004 .

[26]  Andreas Oehler,et al.  Financial Advice Giving and Taking—Where are the Market’s Self-healing Powers and a Functioning Legal Framework When We Need Them? , 2009 .

[27]  Philipp Nussbaumer,et al.  What You See Is What You (Can) Get? Designing for Process Transparency in Financial Advisory Encounters , 2011, INTERACT.

[28]  Jay F. Nunamaker,et al.  Collaboration Engineering with ThinkLets to Pursue Sustained Success with Group Support Systems , 2003, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..