Examples of Escalation Situations

Escalation situations are situations in which losses have resulted from an original course of action, but where there is the possibility of turning the situation around by investing further time, money, or effort. A most outstanding example, and currently the subject of extensive notoriety, would be President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. Having inherited the War from Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson wanted to believe it was inevitable that an inexperienced, untrained and under-supplied North Vietnamese army would collapse. To this end, and listening to the advise of many of the "best and the brightest" holdovers, Johnson escalated the war, spent more money, sacrificed more lives, and then relinquished the Presidency.

On a lesser scale, of course, everyday examples abound: investors who rationalize away losses by "dollar-cost-averaging" despite declining values; Malibu residents who continue to rebuild their homes after rains and fires devastate the same locations year-in and year-out; and battered women who stay in hopeless relationships believing in who knows what. All share the difficult choice between putting greater effort into the present line of behavior and starting to consider new alternatives. At the organizational level, similar situations prevail: pharmaceutical companies increasing their investments in the research and development of products that are not performing as expected; aerospace and defense contractors bidding for governm

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, high social-anxiety conditions, and is often interpreted as face-saving, which is not unusually evidenced in bargaining environments, where it is common to find an escalation of hostilities as both parties refuse to back down from earlier positions. Decision-makers are often most closely identified with a project, when their advocacy of it has been public, explicit, perceived to be high in volition, and repeated. "Reagonomics," for example, increasingly bound the person to the behavior, thus making withdrawal from the course of action much more difficult. Although face-saving and external binding can both be viewed as social factors that increase decision-makers costs of withdrawal, there are social rewards for persistence. Many costly escalation situations involve the persistence of an entire organization (rather than an isolated individual) to a losing course of action. Probably the simplest organizational determinant is institutional inertia, and usually attributable to breakdowns in internal communications and difficulties in mobilizing constituents. If actions necessitate altering long-standing policies, violating rules or discarding accepted procedures, inertia may result. Organizations attempting to withdraw from a losi

Category: Psychology - E