Productive Stasis^™ and escalation of commitment

A company keeps funding a product after customers have repeatedly declined it. The team has evidence of failure but commits more money and time. That is the territory of escalation of commitment. In his review of the research, Joel Brockner described persistence in a failing course of action and examined explanations for why people keep investing.

Another company has spent a year improving a product that nobody has been allowed to buy. Its staff may be busy every day. There is no sales result to learn from because the offer never opened. Calling this escalation assumes evidence of market failure that does not yet exist. The work is still private.

Jim Winner's Productive Stasis framework describes recurring goal-related activity that yields too few appropriately chosen external outcomes. It can include an unlaunched offer, an unsent proposal, or divided effort across several viable projects. Its key observation is about the missing consequential threshold, such as release or submission, rather than the persistence of spending after bad feedback.

The concepts are not mutually exclusive. A business might persist with one demonstrably failing product and simultaneously keep a second, viable one in private revision. Some Productive Stasis cases may follow setbacks too. The difference is the evidence at hand. Escalation requires a failing course and continued investment despite that signal. A private product has not produced a customer decision, favorable or unfavorable.

The distinction changes which question needs an answer. An outsider may say, "They need to quit," when the project has never been tested. Another may say, "They only need to launch," when the market has already rejected it repeatedly. Those are materially different situations. Productive Stasis asks whether the work has reached the world. Escalation of commitment examines continued investment in the face of the response already received.

By James (Jim) Winner
Research and publication history