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JOURNAL ARTICLE
The Ombudsman: Management Folklore and Management Science: On Portfolio Planning, Escalation Bias, and Such [with Comments and Reply]
J. Scott Armstrong, William T. Ross, Jr., Hal R. Arkes, Richard H. Franke and Robert A. Peterson
Interfaces
Vol. 26, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1996), pp. 25-55
Published by: INFORMS
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25062149
Page Count: 31
Escalation Bias
The original study on escalation bias [Staw 1976] showed that managers tend to reinvest in projects that have gone poorly. This supports management folklore that managers throw good money after bad. Managers believe that other managers suffer from escalation bias.
Staw asked subjects (acting as managers) to invest in one of two R&D projects. Half of the subjects were then told that their investment had done well over a subsequent period, and the other half that their investment had done poorly. They were given a chance to invest more, but this time they could split their investment between the same two projects. Subjects who learned that their selected investment was doing poorly tended to invest more money in the same project than did those who were told that their selected project had done well.
Armstrong, Coviello, and Safranek [1993], referred to here to as ACS, studied escalation bias using the materials that Staw had given to his subjects. (Staw provided us with the materials.) However, ACS changed the context from an R&D investment to either an advertising investment or a product design investment. ACS also changed the dates to make the case more contemporary. The results did not support the original findings; escalation bias did not generalize to these marketing decisions.
Were the ACS findings controversial? One way to view the study is that it simply helped to define the limits to which escalation bias can be generalized. This does not seem overly controversial. However, another viewpoint is that it showed that, in general, the research findings about escalation bias are not generalizable. Furthermore, ACS, like others before, concluded that the problem in Staw's original study design did not have a correct decision. That is, the subjects did not receive information that would allow them to make a rational decision. To do so they would need information about the future profitability for each alternative. Because they did not have such information, one could not say that escalation bias harmed decision making in these studies. Given these considerations, ACS concluded that 15 years of research that was spawned by Staw's original study produced little of value to managers.
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发表于 2019-11-17 14:58:36
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