Keywords

choice; chief financial officer; allocation

Abstract

The escalation of commitment to a particular course of action has, in the past eleven years, become an increasingly popular area for research in the psychological aspects of decision making. The major question posed by this line of research is: "Does an individual become so committed to a particular course of action that he/she can no longer analyze the situation objectively and, consequently, makes irrational decisions to continue investing when such activity is no longer advisable?" Staw (1981) states that the escalation phenomenon can occur when an individual becomes overly committed to a chosen course of action. He adds that the underlying assumption of this line of research is "that individuals may go beyond the passive distortion of adverse consequences in an effort to rationalize a behavioral error" (p. 579). In other words, if an individual is committed to a particular course of action, then he/she may commit a greater amount of resources, following negative feedback, in order to "turn the situation around" and in an attempt to eventually appear competent.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu

Graduation Date

1988

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Burroughs, Wayne

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Format

PDF

Pages

94 p.

Language

English

Rights

Public Domain

Release Date

5-1-1988

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0023888

Subjects

Choice (Psychology) -- Decision making; Chief financial officers -- Decision making; Business enterprises -- Finance -- Decision making; Resource partitioning (Ecology); Behavior evolution; Economics -- Psychological aspects; Psychology, Comparative

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

Download

Share

COinS