The effect of obedience pressure and authoritarianism on managers' project evaluation decisions

✍ Scribed by Vincent K Chong; Imran Syarifuddin

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 294 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0882-6110
• DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2010.04.004

✦ Synopsis

This study examines the effects that obedience pressure and the personality trait of authoritarianism have on managers' project evaluation decisions. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the various hypotheses formulated in this study. The results suggest that project managers have a higher inclination to escalate their commitment to a failing project in the presence of obedience pressure. The results further reveal that project managers' tendency to escalate is most prominent in a private information situation and in an obedience pressure condition. In addition, the results suggest that low authoritarian project managers exhibited a greater tendency to continue a failing project regardless of the extent of obedience pressure under private information conditions. Furthermore, high authoritarian project managers exhibited a greater tendency to continue a failing project only when obedience pressure was present under private information conditions.