"Once escalation takes hold ..."

Deve ter sido isto que aconteceu recentemente com a entrada do Estado no capital do SIRESP:

"Once escalation takes hold, it can be difficult to reverse, but you can reduce the chances of falling into that trap.
...
Escalation of commitment is deeply rooted in the human brain. In a classic experiment, two groups of participants were asked whether they would be willing to invest $1 million to develop a stealth bomber. The first group was asked to assume that the project had not yet been launched and that a rival company had already developed a successful (and superior) product. Unsurprisingly, only 16.7% of those participants opted to commit to the funding.
.
The second group was asked to assume that the project was already 90% complete. Its members, too, were told that a competitor had developed a superior product. This time 85% opted to commit the resources to complete the project.
.
These results underscore the fact that people tend to stick to an existing course of action, no matter how irrational. The project’s likely outcome was identical for both groups. Because a competitor had beaten the company to the market with a superior product, the new product was almost bound to fail. The only difference between the two situations was the timing of the question: before commitment to the project versus when it was nearing completion."

Cuidado com a relação entre humanos e custos afundados. Boa para manter os laços na tribo, má para a racionalidade das decisões de gestão.

Trechos retirados de "Stop Doubling Down on Your Failing Strategy"

Quando não se tem coragem de assumir custos afundados?

Julgo que foi o Paulo Vaz que em tempos me falou do barrete chamado F-35. Uma coisa é certa, quem me falou nele coincidiu no diagnóstico:

"For over two decades, the F-35 has been the symbol of everything that's wrong with mammoth defense contracts: behind schedule, over budget, and initially, over-sold.
...
The development of the F-35 has been a mess by any measurement. There are numerous reasons, but they all come back to what F-35 critics would call the jet's original sin: the Pentagon's attempt to make a one-size-fits-all warplane, a Joint Strike Fighter.
...
Still, we could have seen this coming, and not just because of the technical complexity involved in making a warplane for so many constituents. Long before the delays and overruns that riddles the F-35 program, history was littered with illustrations of multi-mission aircraft that never quite measured up."

Será que isto é o que acontece quando alguém não tem a coragem de assumir os custos afundados?
.
Trechos retirados de "WTF-35: How the Joint Strike Fighter Got to Be Such a Mess"

Acerca da Grécia e dos custos afundados

Volto a "Thinking, Fast and Slow" a propósito da Grécia:
.
"The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy marriages, and unpromising research projects. I have often observed young scientists struggling to salvage a doomed project when they would be better advised to drop it and start a new one. Fortunately, research suggests that at least in some contexts the fallacy can be overcome. The sunk-cost fallacy is identified and taught as a mistake in both economics and business courses, apparently to good effect: there is evidence that graduate students in these fields are more willing than others to walk away from a failing project.
...
The version in which cash was lost leads to more reasonable decisions. It is a better frame because the loss, even if tickets were lost, is “sunk,” and sunk costs should be ignored. History is irrelevant and the only issue that matters is the set of options the theater patron has now, and their likely consequences. Whatever she lost, the relevant fact is that she is less wealthy than she was before she opened her wallet."