Information requests in the context of escalation.

Abstract

Staw's (1981) theory of escalation, that decision makers who are responsible for a failure will be more retrospectively oriented than those who are not responsible for a Jailnre, was tested by monitoring the information requests of subjects performing the Adams and Smith decision case (Staw, 1976). A total of 72 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students completed a computer-administered version of the ease, in which they were permitted to request information files that had been preclassified as retrospective or prospective on the basis of the results of data collected from a different sample of MBA students. We found that 75% of the subjects who were responsible for a previous failure requested retrospective information, compared to about 25% of the subjects who were not responsible for a failure. This significant difference (i.e., p < .05) supported Staw's theory. We also found that the information manipulation eliminated the tendency of subjects who were responsible for failure to escalate allocations.We gratefully acknowledge the useful comments of Joel Brockner, Jay Christensen-Szalanski, Gary Gaeth, Jerry Rose, and two anonymous reviewers on a draft of this article.

Escalation Bias: Does it Extend to Marketing?

“…Consistent with this, subjects who experienced a loss were more concerned about explaining this result than were those who experienced success (Conlon and Parks 1987).…”

Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: The role of negative affect.

“…This correlation indicates that people tended to spend Emotion and Escalation 27 more on the same task when they were responsible for the prior performance than when they were not responsible for it, replicating the responsibility effects on escalation of commitment (Conlon & Park, 1987;Staw, 1976). Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the unique contribution of Unpleasant Affect as well as the Unpleasant Affect × Responsibility interaction effects on escalation of commitment.…”

“…Finally, this situation allows the decision maker either to continue the investment in an attempt to recover the sunk costs or to withdraw entirely from the course of action. Escalation of commitment is typically manifested as the tendency to continue to invest in the losing course of action (Brockner, 1992;Staw, 1976Staw, , 1997Staw & Ross, 1987), particularly when one is personally responsible for the initiation of the failing investment (Arke & Blumer, 1985;Conlon & Park, 1987;Staw, 1976). Researchers often regard personally non-responsible conditions as control conditions.…”

Efekt nepovratnoga troška

“…Bez povratnih informacija koje jasno upućuju na buduće dobitke i gubitke, Bowen smatra da će ljudi nastaviti s ulaganjem kako bi prikupili dodatne podatke ili dali dodatnu šansu projektu. Osim što je Bowenov model presiromašan da objasni sve rezultate na tom području, dodatni je empirijski problem što ispitanici negativne povratne informacije doista i doživljavaju kao negativne (npr., Conlon i Parks, 1987), a kad ih se pita za razloge ponovnog ulaganja, ne navode da su očekivali pozitivne rezultate (Brockner, 1992). Nadalje, u istraživanjima u kojima su podaci bili nedvosmisleni i dalje se dobivaju utjecaji faktora kao što su podjela odgovornosti (Leatherwood i Conlon, 1987).…”