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In a study of conflict in organizations, Lindenberg’s relational signaling theory is used to develop hypotheses on the impact of relationship strength, network embeddedness, and organizational change on social escalation. Social escalation is defined as the involvement of one or more third parties in a conflict. An empirical test is conducted with data on 67 conflicts involving 22 managers, gathered during three years of ethnographic fieldwork and a longitudinal network study in a management team of a German paper factory. Multilevel analysis indicates that strong ties between conflicting parties decrease the level of social escalation, whereas informal power advantage of one party increases the chances for social escalation. Both effects disappear over time. It is argued that the dissolving impact of relationships and networks is due to the disappearance of so-called solidarity frame-stabilizing activities in the firm. The results highlight the context-dependence of network effects and escalation processes.

This paper reports the results of an experimental study examining the joint effect of two group characteristics, responsibility and cohesiveness, on escalation of commitment in an ongoing unsuccessful project. Two levels (high/low) of group responsibility and group cohesiveness were manipulated to examine their effects on group escalation decisions. Forty-eight 3-member decision groups were formed and randomly assigned to four treatment cells with 12 groups in each cell. The results of a 2×2 ANOVA reveal a significant main effect of responsibility on escalation of commitment, as well as a significant interaction of responsibility and cohesiveness. Specifically, groups with both high responsibility and high cohesiveness committed the largest amount of resources to an ongoing unsuccessful project. These results provide support for the proposition that group responsibility and cohesiveness exert significant joint effects on group escalation of commitment in an ongoing unsuccessful project. The findings suggest that periodic changes of group membership to shift responsibility and cohesiveness may generate new attitudes and views to reduce group escalation of commitment.

Escalation of commitment is one of the most influential decision-making biases in entrepreneurs which may incur substantial losses and result in failure by making entrepreneurs allocate an increasing amount of resources to failing plans. Not only is escalation one of the less-researched biases in entrepreneurship but also most of the existing studies have been either limited to specific contexts or exclusively limited to men entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of escalation of commitment among a sample of Iranian women and men entrepreneurs to address these gaps.

By conducting a narrative inquiry, data were collected through semi-structured and in-depth interviews with nine women and 10 men Iranian entrepreneurs who were founder/owners of a small business and had introduced at least one product to the market.

According to the findings of this study, the fear of losing autonomy and fear of being blamed by one’s family were the main drivers of escalation of commitment among the women entrepreneurs, while overconfidence, sense of responsibility and hoping to gain more profits were the main antecedents of escalation among men entrepreneurs.

This study is a pioneer in studying the antecedents of the escalation of commitment among women and men entrepreneurs comparatively in the context of a developing country.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Escalation of commitment is one of the most important decision-making biases among entrepreneurs and may deprive them of valuable resources and even result in their eventual failure. Many entrepreneurs become escalated to their ongoing plans by allocating more resources, even after receiving negative feedbacks regarding those plans. Although the escalating behavior is an inherent part of the entrepreneurial cognition, previous studies have mostly ignored its antecedents among entrepreneurs. This dearth of studies is more severe regarding women entrepreneurs, whose biases have rarely been investigated. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the antecedents of the escalation of commitment among women entrepreneurs.

To explore the antecedents of the escalation of commitment in women entrepreneurs’ decisions based on their lived experiences, this paper used a narrative inquiry. The data were collected by conducting in-depth interviews with three Iranian women entrepreneurs running small businesses and analyzed by narrative data analysis.

According to the findings, bitter memories of previous failures, overconfidence and familial pressure are the main antecedents of the escalation of commitment in women entrepreneurs.

This study has a very important managerial implication for women entrepreneurs, who should know that while decision-making biases may occur unintentionally, they are able to reduce the harmful effects and enhance the benefits of biases by knowing their most common signs.

This study is a pioneer in exploring women entrepreneurs’ biases and took a novel approach by conducting a narrative analysis of women entrepreneurs’ escalation of commitment.

In two experiments on reactions to persistent annoyance from another person, participants employed a very orderly verbal escalation sequence that fit a cascading Guttman scale. This began with requests and moved on to demands, and then to complaints, angry statements, threats, harassment, and abuse, in that order. The more escalated the tactic, the fewer people used it. People seldom skipped a step on the way to their most escalated tactic. Two possible explanations for this pattern seemed plausible in light of the data, that it is due to either a widely snared try‐try‐again script or a declining hierarchy of thresholds. Verbal escalation was associated with a negative view of the annoyer's character, while physical escalation was associated with blame and feelings of frustration and anger. Escalation was discouraged by membership in the same group as the annoyer. Loud noise did not encourage escalation in general but promoted the use of angry statements.

A simulated price war between two competing gas stations provided the context to assess the effects on de‐escalation of the subject's financial shortage, the competitor's financial shortage, and a message from the competitor conveying a non‐exploitative intent. Subject shortages encouraged gasoline price increases (de‐escalation) and competitor shortages encouraged price decreases (escalation). Subjects who were suffering a financial shortage rated their competitor as less likely to cooperate and more likely to exploit them than those who were not. Results were discussed in terms of a simplification of Pruitt and Kimmel's (1977) goal‐expectation hypothesis. One possible explanation for our results is that subjects make a comparison of relative strength before choosing either to de‐escalate or escalate.

This study investigates the potential of actor‐network theory (ANT) for theory development on information technology project escalation, a pervasive problem in contemporary organizations. In so doing, the study aims to contribute to the current dialogue on the potential of ANT in the information systems field. While escalation theory has been used to study “runaway” IT projects, two distinct limitations suggest a potential of using ANT: First, there is a need for research that builds process theory on escalation of IT projects. Second, the role of technology as an important factor (or actor) in the shaping of escalation has not been examined. This paper examines a well‐known case study of an IT project disaster, the computerized baggage handling system at Denver International Airport, using both escalation theory and ANT. A theory‐comparative analysis then shows how each analysis contributes differently to our knowledge about dysfunctional IT projects and how the differences between the analyses mirror characteristics of the two theories. ANT is found to offer a fruitful theoretical addition to escalation research and several conceptual extensions of ANT in the context of IT project escalation are proposed: embedded actor‐networks, host actor‐networks, swift translation and Trojan actor‐networks.

A hidden issue is whether the more de‐escalatory behavior of cooperatively‐motivated compared to competitively‐motivated conflict parties is the result of less concern for one's own goals, more concern for the other's goals, or both. A scenario study and a simulation experiment among undergraduate students confirmed the hypothesis that the difference in other‐concern is the critical explanator. The stronger other‐concern of cooperatively‐motivated compared to competitively motivated parties fostered more accommodating, more problem solving, more compromising, and less forcing, resulting in more de‐escalation or less escalation.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two formal models of escalation and de-escalation: the attractor landscape model and the S-shaped reaction function model. Also, the paper aims to enumerate conditions that affect the shape and location of reaction functions and, hence, the stability of less and more escalated states.

Both models are presented together with geometric proofs of the main assertions of the second model. Overlap and comparative strengths of the models are reviewed. Parts of the social science literature are synthesized in a discussion of the antecedents of stability.

Though derived from totally different traditions, these models are similar in their basic assumptions and predictions. Each model has value. The attractor landscape model is easier to grasp and contains a concept of resistance to escalation that is not found in the S-shaped reaction function model. The latter model looks at individual parties rather than the dyad as a whole and, thus, offers an explanation for most of the phenomena described by the former model. It also allows identification of many variables that affect the shape and location of reaction functions and, hence, can be viewed as antecedents of escalation and de-escalation.

Seven testable hypotheses are presented in the Conclusions section. Laboratory tasks for testing such hypotheses have yet to be developed and there is only one study employing real-life measures. However, it is clear that once research on these phenomena really begins, new variables will be found that moderate the strength of the effects hypothesized.

The models provide concepts for thinking about how to avoid runaway escalation and promote runaway de-escalation. The variables mentioned in the hypotheses suggest ways to diminish the likelihood of runaway escalation and can also be used for constructing measures of the likelihood of that phenomenon. The theories also imply that when the likelihood of runaway escalation increases, disputants should be doubly careful to avoid initiating escalative behavior.

The article is original in that the S-shaped reaction function model is refined and further developed and the proofs are new. The comparison between the models is also new, as is most of the enumeration of conditions affecting the stability of low and high escalation. The value of the article is to provide concepts and theory for thinking about escalation and de-escalation, and testable hypotheses for studying these phenomena.