Feeding and Breaking the Escalation of Commitment: The Role of Organizational Politics and Institutional Processes

47 Pages Posted: 6 Nov 2015

See all articles by Farah Kodeih

Farah Kodeih

Reims Management School (RMS)

Hamid Bouchikhi

ESSEC Business School

Date Written: November 4, 2015

Abstract

This paper offers a longitudinal study grounded in the observation of an organization that was trapped in escalation of commitment to a failed strategy for a decade. Specifically, we will show how internal (organizational) and external (institutional) phenomena enabled the emergence of the strategy, fed the management team’s escalation of commitment despite internal opposition and institutional push-back and, eventually, constrained the management team to acknowledge failure and halt the escalation cycle. The case study reveals two mechanisms which played a central role in halting escalation and forcing a strategic reorientation: (1) expansion of organizational membership brings in new recruits who promote discrepant interpretations of ongoing courses of action thereby feeding political struggles inside the organization; (2) institutional field-level pressures provide political resources to internal opponents and enable them to force the management team to acknowledge failure and break the escalation cycle.

Keywords: Escalation of commitment, de-escalation, organizational politics, institutional pressures, French Grande Ecole de Commerce

JEL Classification: D23

Suggested Citation

Kodeih, Farah and Bouchikhi, Hamid, Feeding and Breaking the Escalation of Commitment: The Role of Organizational Politics and Institutional Processes (November 4, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2686181 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2686181

Farah Kodeih (Contact Author)

Reims Management School (RMS) ( email )

Reims
France

Hamid Bouchikhi

ESSEC Business School ( email )

3 Avenue Bernard Hirsch
CS 50105 CERGY
CERGY, CERGY PONTOISE CEDEX 95021
France

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