Information to support decision making can be used substantively to facilitate the choice process. It can also be used symbolically to justify choices already made. The majority of prior research has focused on the use of information to reach a decision and has rarely considered the inherently political nature of decision-making where managers approach a situation with clear preferences, and subsequently acquire and use information to support these preferences. This pilot study will investigate how the symbolic use of information in a large face- to-face group is related to the decision context through the analysis of floor statements from the Congressional Record. The research has the potential to contribute to theory by augmenting existing knowledge of organizational decision making processes. The pilot study will test and validate the research design which addresses some of the limitations of prior cross- sectional research on organizational information processing and which has been criticized for focusing on individual decision makers in isolation from their environment.
