Understanding Behavior in Escalation Situations.

Staw, B. M., & Ross, J. (1989). Understanding Behavior in Escalation Situations. Science, 246(4927), 216-220.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1989

DOI

10.1126/science.246.4927.216

Link

https://doi.org/10.1126/science.246.4927.216

Cited from

behavioral_economics, psychology

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Escalation of Commitment
  • continue with strengthened monitoring, redirect, exit, or restructure the decision process; (n) a decision-process redesign

    This sourceSynthesizes the four determinant classes (project, psychological, social, organizational) into a dynamic model whose forces evolve over time.

• Sunk Cost and Irreversible Commitment
  • The structural insight is robust: a person abandoning a failed relationship, an organization shutting down a loss-making division, a technology team migrating from legacy systems, and a policy-maker cutting a failed program all exhibit the same pattern—past commitment constraining future choice despite clear forward-looking economic logic, a cross-domain regularity Staw and Ross (1989) document in their review of escalation across business, government, and personal contexts.

    This sourceCross-domain review showing that the same past-investment-constrains-choice pattern recurs across business, government, military, and personal-life decisions.

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