The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Escalation of Commitment to a Failing Course of Action: Toward Theoretical Progress
Abstract
Escalating commitment (or escalation) refers to the tendency for decision makers to persist with failing courses of action. The present article first reviews evidence suggesting that escalation is determined, at least in part, by decision makers' unwillingness to admit that their prior allocation of resources to the chosen course of action was in vain (the self-justification explanation). A distinction is drawn in the second part of the article between alternative (to self-justification) explanations of escalating commitment: Some are designed to replace self-justification, whereas others are intended to supplement self-justification, that is, to add explanatory power beyond that which can be accounted for by self-justification. There is little evidence that the replacement theories provide a better explanation than does self-justification; however, theories designed to supplement self-justification are likely to lead to a more complete explanation. The article concludes by describing several research str...
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Cites
Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1914185 · Cited by 48,524
A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
Festinger, L. (1957) · doi:10.1515/9781503620766 · Cited by 24,241 · cited 2×
“Couched originally in Festinger's (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance, this viewpoint posits that decision makers become entrapped in a previous course of action because of their unwillingness to admit-to themselves and/or others-that the prior resources were allocated in vain.”
The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7455683 · Cited by 18,497
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.39.4.341 · Cited by 6,544
Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985) · Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · doi:10.1016/0749-5978(85)90049-4 · Cited by 2,573
Knee-deep in the big muddy: a study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action
Staw, B. M. (1976) · Organizational Behavior and Human Performance · doi:10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2 · Cited by 2,061 · cited 1×
“For example, in an early study in which negative feedback and the need to justify were manipulated orthogonally (Staw, 1976), subjects played the role of a company's financial vice president who had to decide how much money to allocate for continued research and development in one of the company's”
BackgroundThe Escalation of Commitment To a Course of Action
Staw, B. M. (1981) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.1981.4285694 · Cited by 1,693
Group polarization: A critical review and meta-analysis.
Isenberg, D. J. (1986) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.6.1141 · Cited by 1,044
Cited by
Organizational Response to Adversity: Fusing Crisis Management and Resilience Research Streams
Williams, T. A., Gruber, D. A., Sutcliffe, K. M., Shepherd, D. A., & Zhao, E. Y. (2017) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/annals.2015.0134 · Cited by 1,945
Schreyögg, G., & Kliesch‐Eberl, M. (2007) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.613 · Cited by 1,036
Laverty, K. J. (1996) · Academy of Management Review · doi:10.5465/amr.1996.9702100316 · Cited by 690
The sunk cost and Concorde effects: Are humans less rational than lower animals?
Arkes, H. R., & Ayton, P. (1999) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.125.5.591 · Cited by 554
Pre-Entry Knowledge, Learning, and the Survival of New Firms
Dencker, J. C., Gruber, M., & Shah, S. K. (2009) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1080.0387 · Cited by 369
Metadata
- Authors
- Brockner, J.
- Venue
- The Academy of Management Review
- Publisher
- Academy of Management
- Published
- 1992-01
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 39
- ISSN
- 0363-7425 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2042888638
- Cited by
- 1,055
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 8.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
