Continuing a disappointing project: persistence or escalating commitment?
When a project repeatedly delivers disappointing results, its manager must distinguish a surmountable difficulty from a course of action defended because it was their own choice. For SHR’s “Management complexe” programme, the precise question is this: how can further funding be assessed without turning past investment into automatic justification?
What the literature establishes
Barry Staw (1976, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance) shows, in an investment decision experiment, that personal responsibility for an initial choice can encourage the commitment of additional resources following negative results. The issue is therefore not just project quality: the decision-maker’s role in its history can also matter. This finding identifies a possible mechanism of escalation, not a general inability of managers to revise their decisions.
The weight of resources already spent
Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer (1985, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) document the sunk cost effect: having already invested money, time or effort can increase the propensity to continue. Their research links this effect, in particular, to the desire not to appear wasteful. Two distinct questions may then become confused: was the past investment justified, and is the next investment still justified?
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a disappointing project should be stopped, or that its sponsor should routinely be excluded from the decision. These studies support neither as a general rule. Continuing may still be justified by expected future benefits, learning already gained or exit costs; these need to be distinguished from genuinely irrecoverable past expenditure. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not resolve
The research settings do not reproduce the full duration, interdependencies and obligations of an organisational project. In particular, they provide no universal stopping threshold for medtech validation, a higher education partnership, an international sports initiative or a scale-up in the Lake Geneva region. Nor does a review form eliminate the problem if success criteria are rewritten after every disappointment.
A practical check in Lausanne
As an application exercise for SHR’s “Management complexe” programme in Lausanne, a team can record the expected result, its verification date and the condition that would trigger a review of continuation before each new allocation of resources. Over a four-week trial period, it can calculate the proportion of recommitment decisions with all three elements dated before approval, using project files and decision records. This indicator checks the traceability of forward-looking reasoning, not its correctness; safety requirements, compliance obligations and contractual commitments still require separate examination. To go further: explore the Complex Management training in Lausanne in the canton of Vaud, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Complex Management in Lausanne
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