Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

9-2000

Abstract

"Decision entrapment" refers to the phenomenon that decision-makers commit to the negative or failure choices, and tend to throw more resources in some projects that seem to fail certainly. We try to combine two contradictory viewpoints, self-justification vs. information-processing perspectives, to clarify the causality of decision entrapment through experimental approach. Staw suggests that the emotional “self-justification" is the major mechanism of decision entrapment. Adopting the information-processing perspective, Kahneman & Tversky propose that “certainty effect" bring about perception distortion, which is the main cause of entrapment behavior. We used computer programs to simulate a decision-making scenario, and manipulated “personal responsibility" and "project output" variables. The subjects are middle-leveled (and above) managers from 5 companies, and were asked to play the role of general managers in the simulated task. The result doesn't support the self-justification perspective, but verifies certainty effect of prospect theory. We then propose some management techniques to prevent and correct entrapment behavior.

Keywords

Entrapment Behavior, Self-justification, Prospect Theory, Certainty Effect, Experimental Approach

Discipline

Applied Behavior Analysis | Experimental Analysis of Behavior

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Journal of Management and Business Research

Volume

17

Issue

3

First Page

515

Last Page

546

ISSN

2421-4306

Publisher

Chinese Management Association

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://jom.management.org.tw/eng/search_detail.php?gid=510

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