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Escalation of commitment in entrepreneurship-minded groups

Dmitri G. Markovitch (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA)
Dongling Huang (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA)
Lois Peters (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA)
B.V. Phani (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India)
Deepu Philip (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India)
William Tracy (Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA)

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

ISSN: 1355-2554

Article publication date: 27 May 2014

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate commitment escalation tendencies and magnitude in groups of entrepreneurship-minded decision makers.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses a software-based management simulation to expose 447 graduate business students in the USA and India to research stimuli under conditions that resemble important aspects of entrepreneurs’ business environment, such as a focus on overall firm performance. Unlike most previous escalation research that studied individuals, the primary unit of analysis is a three-person group.

Findings

The paper demonstrates a positive relationship between the groups’ entrepreneurial intentions and escalation magnitude. The paper also finds a direct relationship between sunk costs and subsequent investment amounts, suggesting an additional route through which sunk costs may impact escalation behavior – anchoring and insufficient adjustment.

Practical implications

The authors hope that the findings will stimulate further research on commitment escalation modalities and mechanisms among entrepreneurship-minded decision makers and provide impetus for efforts to develop effective debiasing strategies.

Originality/value

The study addresses a long-standing gap in entrepreneurship research, by demonstrating a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial intentions and escalation behaviors. Also noteworthy, the results are generated using a different research method (simulation) than the experimental approach used in most extant escalation research. As such, the exploration provides important triangulating evidence that is currently lacking from the rich escalation literature.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this research from Syndicate Bank Entrepreneurship Research and Training Center-IIT Kanpur. The authors thank David Gautschi for providing initial impetus for this research. The authors also thank Dr Hao Zhao for his helpful comments and Ripul Kumar, Biswajeet Mondal, Gaurav Gupta, and Anuj Kumar Singh for technical assistance.

Citation

G. Markovitch, D., Huang, D., Peters, L., Phani, B.V., Philip, D. and Tracy, W. (2014), "Escalation of commitment in entrepreneurship-minded groups", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 302-323. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-08-2013-0127

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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