UCL School of Management is delighted to welcome, Professor Tian Heong Chan: Emory University Goizueta Business School, to host a research seminar discussing: ‘How Voting Protocols Shape Committee Discussions and Outcomes’: New Product Evaluations at the FDA.

Abstract: Complex and important decisions are often made with advice from a committee of experts.  But how do a committee’s “rules of engagement” affect the way individuals discuss, how they vote, and ultimately the quality of their collective recommendation?  Compiling transcripts from US Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee meetings, we study how a 2007 switch from sequential to simultaneous voting procedures changed committee discussions, information exchange, and decision making. Consistent with past findings, we show that (in comparison with a sequential voting protocol) simultaneous voting led to a reduction in the likelihood of unanimous votes. Importantly, we show that this reduction can be explained by broader discussions that surfaced a more diverse set of information. We also find evidence of behavioural changes that support our theory that members were eliciting more diverse information from each other: under simultaneous voting, committee members exhibited greater equality in talking time, directed a greater proportion of questions to each other, and adopted language that was more positive, authentic, and equal in projecting status and confidence. Finally, we show that recommendations under simultaneous voting were more likely to be accurate, in the sense that drugs recommended via simultaneous voting were less likely to be later withdrawn from the market. In sum, we show novel evidence that changes in the voting protocol can lead to marked improvements in how information is elicited from and exchanged between individuals, as well as in the process by which groups of experts arrive at a joint recommendation.