Rational Versus Intuitive Gatekeeping: Escalation of Commitment in the Front End of NPD
Ramon Eliëns , Katrin Eling, Sarah Gelper, and Fred Langerak
The unwillingness of a gatekeeper to let go of a fruitless new product development (NPD) project
wastes valuable resources and hampers NPD performance. The onset of such escalation of
commitment is likely to occur already in the front end of NPD, where high ambiguity and
complexity make it hard to distinguish fruitless from potentially successful projects.
This study investigates if a gatekeeper’s thinking style—whether they think rationally or whether
they follow their intuition—can prevent escalation of commitment in the front end. Theory on
cognition provides arguments for and against either thinking style’s influence on escalation of
commitment, but empirical evidence on this matter is lacking.
Our study demonstrates that gatekeepers who think rationally are less likely to escalate their
commitment than those who follow their intuition. This result holds both in a correlational study
of dispositional thinking styles, as well as in an individual‐level randomized experiment in which
the thinking style of experienced practitioners before they take gate decisions is induced.
Our findings provide ample opportunities for improving existing front end gate review practices, such
as allocating candidates for gatekeeper positions based on their thinking style, training gatekeepers
to think rationally, and increasing the use of gate ‐decision rules and templates.
Practitioner Points
• Already in the front end of NPD, gatekeepers are vulnerable to escalation of commitment to
an NPD project.
• A gatekeeper’s rational thinking style improves decision making at the last front end gate, as
it reduces escalation of commitment.
• Careful selection and guidance of gatekeepers can enhance the use of a more rational
thinking style when making decisions at the last front end gate
Stopping unpromising NPD projects has been shown to be difficult. Even when there are clear
indications early on that a project needs to be aborted, it is frequently carried on nonetheless. This
phenomenon is known as escalation of commitment. Escalation of commitment can arise at the
decision gates of the NPD process. At each decision gate, the managers who review the NPD project
—called the “gatekeepers”—need to make a definite decision whether to continue or to stop the
investment in a project. As soon as the decision has been made to advance a new product idea and
to commit resources to its advancement, gatekeepers are likely to escalate their commitment to the
project at any later gate. Previous research has identified factors and mechanisms, such as
organizational culture; gate decision process characteristics; project team training; and the use of
specific project testing, analysis, and assessment methods to combat such erroneous decision making
at NPD gates. Our study extends this research
The majority of best practice firms use a Stage‐ Gate® type of development process, which implies a
stepwise commitment of resources to the NPD project. At a predefined number of review points or
“gates” a committee of selected gatekeepers with different functional backgrounds carefully
evaluates the NPD project and decides whether additional resources will be allocated to the project
or whether the NPD project will be stopped. Gatekeepers are typically experienced managers with
authority over the organization’s resources (Cooper, 1994, 2008). Thus gatekeepers finance and
oversee an NPD project, but are not involved in decisions about the project’s execution, which are
taken by the project leader and the project team members.
, Escalation of commitment: In NPD gatekeepers, escalation behavior can best be explained by the
theories of (1) belief inertia distortion and (2) self ‐justification. A belief inertia distortion refers to
gatekeepers’ prior beliefs and current beliefs about the potential of an NPD project
Each NPD project starts with a promising idea because resources for the advancement of an idea are
only committed to a project that has the potential to become successful (Koen et al., 2002). The
initial positive belief weighs in heavily in the project’s re ‐evaluation at a subsequent gate ‐review
point. When new information about the project has become available (e.g., about technologies,
markets, regulations, or competitors), the gatekeeper will inevitably check whether this information
aligns with their initial belief. If the new information is negative, the gatekeeper experiences a
dissonance between their initial positive belief and the new negative information and is tempted to
distort or ignore conflicting new information. Such a positive belief about the initial investment
decision of an NPD project can be formed by anyone in the organization and thus induce escalation
of commitment, even in gatekeepers who have not been involved in the execution of the project or
in decision making at the first gate. Consequently, even replacing all the gatekeepers of a gate
committee from one gate to the next does not sufficiently prevent escalation of commitment from
occurring. Additionally, self‐justification can reinforce escalation of commitment in NPD gatekeepers
that stay on a committee from the beginning to end of an NPD project, and thus make repeated gate
decisions on the same project
Front end:
The earliest phase of the NPD process is often called the front end of NPD. The front end captures
the idea and concept generation stages and decision gates before the actual development process
starts.
Although every company organizes the front end differently, two go/stop decision gates can
generally be distinguished (Cooper, 2008), the idea gate and the concept gate. At the idea gate a
decision is made whether to allocate resources to the advancement of a new product idea (Eling,
Griffin, and Langerak, 2016). At the concept gate a decision is made whether to actually develop the
defined new product concept and to commit significant resources for its development (Kim and
Wilemon, 2002), which marks the final gate of the front end and the beginning of the actual product
development The onset of gatekeeper escalation of commitment is expected to occur at the concept
gate of the front end.
If the NPD project reaches the concept gate, at least one previous “go” decision has been taken (e.g.,
at the idea gate). This sets the stage for escalation of commitment to occur. Additionally, one of the
main initiators of escalation of commitment is project uncertainty (Brockner, 1992; Sleesman et al.,
2012).
Uncertainty about a new project is highest in the front end compared to the subsequent stages in the
NPD process (Kim and Wilemon, 2002; Van den Ende, Frederiksen, and Prencipe, 2015). Gatekeepers
are highly unsure whether the early investments at the idea and concept gates will eventually pay off
with a successful new product, and are thus even more likely than in later stages to ignore
conflicting, but uncertain negative information.
The concept gate, which marks the transition of a project from the front end to the development
phase, is regarded as one of the most crucial gates during NPD. This gate signifies the last
opportunity of reflection upon the new project before actual development ensues, and investment
of resources is exponentially ramped up (Cooper, Edgett, and Kleinschmidt, 2004; Khurana and
Rosenthal, 1997). If not inhibited early, escalation of commitment to an NPD project in the front end
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