TOO CLOSE TO QUIT - THE ROLE OF PROJECT COMPLETION IN MAINTAINING COMMITMENT

Conlon and Garland (1993) demonstrated that information about the degr ee of project completion, as compared with information about sunk cost s, seemed to be the driving force behind continued investment in an R& D project. In the present paper, we replicate and extend this work. In studies with experienced bank managers, Chinese graduate students, an d advanced-level MBA students, we find overwhelming support for the im portance of project completion on investment intentions, with no indic ation of typical sunk cost effects. We argue that our results support a goal substitution explanation for many escalation phenomena where, a s progress moves forward on a project, completion of the project itsel f takes increasing precedence over other goals (e.g., economic profit) that may have been more salient at the time the project was initiated .