Page 100 - The Resilient Organization

Why Leadership Matters, but It Is Not Sufficient 87

even when it is clearly doomed (Staw & Ross, 1987). Perhaps not surpris-
ingly, companies tend to change course by changing leaders. Gist (1987)
suggests that self-efficacy may produce overconfidence and result in feel-
ings of invulnerability or excessive optimism, thus leading to the escala-
tion of actions (Whyte, Saks, & Hook, 1997). March and Shapira (1987)
suggest that the managers’ tendency to pay more attention to the risk of
loss than to the risk of missing a possible gain (see also Thaler, Tversky,
Kahneman, & Schwartz, 1997) may induce passivity—and creeping exter-
nal events may then take their course in creating unforeseen binds.

Table 6.1 Explaining Commitment Creep

Individual Organizational
Deliberate • Self-efficacy • Premium on leadership
consistency
• Managerial attention
• Risk aversity
Emergent • Decision-making heuristics • Escalation of commitment
• Cognitive myopia • Organizational learning
• Competency traps
• Structural inertia and
organizational routines
• Strategic momentum
• Founding conditions and
imprinting forces

Simon (1947), March and Simon (1958), and more recently Ocasio
(1997) have emphasized the limits to human cognition. Time-
constrained managers do have to constantly make choices about what to
pay attention to, as time does not afford consideration of all matters
(Ocasio, 1997). Thus the perpetuation of a particular course of action
may be a simple result of the selective intake of information, chosen on
the basis of the current strategy. During the course of a busy day, paying
attention to emerging or intervening issues not previously on the agenda
may be difficult (or perceived a luxury the manager can ill afford).

(continued)