Escalation research: providing new frontiers for applying behavior analysis to organizational behavior.
Reinforcement history explains why managers—and clients—stick with losing choices, giving BCBAs a lever for change.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ghaziuddin (2000) wrote a theory paper. It says bosses keep bad projects alive because past wins act like reinforcement.
The paper pulls plain ABA ideas—reinforcement history and response cost—into board rooms, not clinics.
What they found
No new data. The author maps escalation of commitment onto reinforcement. Past payouts make leaders double down, even when losses mount.
How this fits with other research
Fraley (1998) asked for ABA tools in decision science. Ghaziuddin (2000) answers by showing how reinforcement predicts escalation.
McSween et al. (2017) extend the same spirit to safety. They add leadership checks to Heinrich’s triangle, proving ABA fits many org layers.
Powell et al. (2020) later marry ABA to quality-improvement cycles. Both papers push the same goal: export behavior principles to industry.
Why it matters
You can now frame stubborn staff habits or budget choices as reinforcement traps. Track what keeps the behavior alive, then remove or flip those reinforcers. Next time a team clings to a failed plan, speak their language—show the hidden payoff history and design a new contingency.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Decision fiascoes such as escalation of commitment, the tendency of decision makers to "throw good money after bad," can have serious consequences for organizations and are therefore of great interest in applied research. This paper discusses the use of behavior analysis in organizational behavior research on escalation. Among the most significant aspects of behavior-analytic research on escalation is that it has indicated that both the patterns of outcomes that decision makers have experienced for past decisions and the patterns of responses that they make are critical for understanding escalation. This research has also stimulated the refinement of methods by researchers to better assess decision making and the role reinforcement plays in it. Finally, behavior-analytic escalation research has not only indicated the utility of reinforcement principles for predicting more complex human behavior but has also suggested some additional areas for future exploration of decision making using behavior analysis.
The Behavior analyst, 2000 · doi:10.1007/BF03392011