Escalating commitment in the death zone: New insights from the 1996 Mount Everest disaster

The procession of people and organisations that pour resources into evidently failing causes is surprising and seemingly never-ending. This phenomenon, which is called “escalating commitment” (Staw, 1976), refers to situations in which people are incapable of turning future disasters into sound current decisions. The purpose of this paper is to use the, in project management literature (Kloppenborg and Opfer, 2002), non-traditional case of the 1996 Mt Everest disaster to explain and analyse escalating commitment determinants and processes. Not only does the paper identify and add a determinant to escalation but it also treats determinants and processes in a novel and intertwined fashion. The conceptual developments and findings suggest that escalating commitment strives on conditions that are inherent to any project, which consequently project managers should be aware of. Based on the results project failures could be better explained and understood by examining several explanatory levels simultaneously.

Research highlights
► Identification of old and new determinants for escalating commitment.
► Identification of parallel and sequential sub-processes of escalating comments.
► The situatedness of activities is able to explain how escalating commitment emerge.