Successfully managing large construction projects within defined budget and time constraints has always been a major challenge largely because crucial decisions about the project's ultimate fate have to be made within an environment of significant uncertainty at the beginning of the project. It is not surprising that cost and time overruns are commonplace on construction projects. Existing literature often suggests economical, technical, political or managerial roots to this phenomenon. A less explored possible cause within construction management framework is the escalation of commitment to a course of action. This theory, grounded in social psychology and organisation behaviour, suggests the tendency of people and organisations to become 'locked-in' and 'entrapped' in a particular course of action and thereby 'throw good money after bad' to make the venture succeed. This defies conventional rationality behind subjective expected utility theory. Through a critical analysis of the literature, we identify different frequently cited enablers of escalation of commitment. Using a hindsight constructivist approach, we then demonstrate references to some of these enablers on the Scottish Parliament project. We found strong evidence in support of possible strategic misrepresentation, confirmation bias, self-justification and optimism bias. We highlight the importance of setting realistic time and budget constraints to circumvent escalation and make several recommendations to attenuate unwarranted escalation of commitment, including the use of an objective outsider to evaluate responses to disconfirming information and the structuring of incentive systems that do not punish for inconsistency in order to curb the effects of self-justification and reputation management.
CitationAHIAGA-DAGBUI, D.D. and SMITH, S.D. 2014. Exploring escalation of commitment in construction project management: case study of the Scottish Parliament project. In Raiden, A. and Aboagye-Nimo, E. (eds.) Proceedings of the 30th Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM) annual conference, 1-3 September 2014, Portsmouth, UK. Reading: ARCOM [online], pages 753-762. Available from: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar2014-0753-0762_Ahiaga-Dagbui_Smith.pdf
Presentation Conference Type Conference Paper (published) Conference Name 30th Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM) annual conference Start Date Sep 1, 2014 End Date Sep 3, 2014 Acceptance Date Jan 31, 2014 Online Publication Date Sep 1, 2014 Publication Date Dec 31, 2014 Deposit Date Sep 22, 2015 Publicly Available Date Sep 22, 2015 Publisher ARCOM Association of Researchers in Construction Management Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed Pages 753-762 ISBN 9780955239083 Keywords Cost overruns; Confirmation bias; Escalation of commitment; Self justification; Strategic mis- representation Public URL http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1303 Publisher URL http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/ar2014-0753-0762_Ahiaga-Dagbui_Smith.pdf Contract Date Sep 22, 2015 Files Downloadable CitationsRetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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