Escalation of commitment in entrepreneurship-minded groups
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research
ISSN: 1355-2554
Article publication date: 27 May 2014
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
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited