Participants' authoritarian personality was measured by a seven-point Likert-type scale originally developed by Rigby (1984). The instrument is a reduced form of Rigby (1982) General Attitude Toward Institutional Authority (GAIAS). This scale has been used in prior accounting studies (e.g. DeZoort and Lord, 1994 F.T. DeZoort and A.T. Lord, An investigation of obedience pressure effects on auditors judgments, Behavioral Research in Accounting 6 (1994), pp. 1–30.DeZoort & Lord, 1994). This instrument was developed to capture a pro-authority attitude as a dimension (see [DeZoort and Lord, 1994], [Harrison, 1991], [Rigby, 1982] and [Rigby, 1984]) and is suitable to explain the effects of the obedience pressure treatment used in our experiment. Participants were asked to express their opinion on each item using the seven-point scale, anchored with (1) strongly disagree and (7) strongly agree. Consistent with prior accounting studies ([DeZoort and Lord, 1994], [Heaven and Rigby, 1986], [Ray and Lovejoy, 1990], [Rigby, 1984] and [Rigby, 1987]), the scores of the 16 items were summed to form a composite measure of the scale for authoritarianism. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.71 (Cronbach, 1951) obtained for the scale indicates satisfactory internal reliability for the scale.
H1 predicts that project managers will exhibit a greater tendency to continue a failing project when obedience pressure is present than when it is absent. The results presented in Panel A, Table 1 show that the mean response of project managers who experienced obedience pressure (4.28) is higher than the mean response of project managers who did not experience such pressure (6.11). A t-test shows that the difference in the mean scores between these two groups is statistically significant (t-value = 3.501, p > 0.001). Therefore H1 is supported. This result indicates that the managers who were subjected to obedience pressure were more likely to continue a failing project than the managers who were not subject to such pressure.
H2 predicts that project managers in a condition of private information and subject to obedience pressure would have a higher tendency to escalate commitment than project managers who experience only one or neither of these conditions. The results presented in Panel B, Table 1 show that there is a statistically significant (F-value = 2.776, p < 0.05, 1-tailed) two-way interaction between information availability and obedience pressure.
A closer look at Table 1, Panels A and C reveal the nature of this interaction. The results presented in Table 1, Panels A and C, reveal that the mean preference responses of project managers in the Private Information Condition and Presence of Obedience Pressure cells is statistically significantly less than that of those in (1) Public Information Condition and Absence of Obedience Pressure cells (i.e., Cell 4 = 2.45 < Cell 1 = 7.21, mean difference = 4.77, p < 0.01, 1-tailed); (2) Public Information and Presence of Obedience Pressure cells (i.e., Cell 4 = 2.45 < Cell 2 = 6.10, mean difference = 3.66, p < 0.01, 1-tailed) and (3) Private Information and Absence of Obedience Pressure cells (i.e., Cell 4 = 2.45 < Cell 3 = 5.03, mean difference = 2.59, p < 0.01, 1-tailed). This is illustrated in Fig. 1. Taken together, these results provide strong support for hypothesis H2.
H3 states that under private information conditions, low authoritarian project managers will exhibit a greater tendency to continue a failing project regardless of the extent of obedience pressure, whereas hypothesis H4 states that under private information conditions, high authoritarian project managers will exhibit a greater tendency to continue a failing project when they are subject to the presence rather than absence of obedience pressure. The results in Table 2, Panel A reveal that low authoritarian project managers escalate their commitment to continue with a failing project under both the absence (i.e. Cell 1 = 4.38) and presence (i.e., Cell 3 = 2.36) of obedience pressure. A Bonferroni t-test reveals that Cells 1 and 3 are not statistically significant (p < 0.11, 1-tailed). Taken together, these results support H3 and suggest that low authoritarian project managers expressed their tendency to escalate commitment to continue with a failing project under a condition of private information, regardless of the extent of obedience pressure.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 2. Mean preference responses for individual across obedience pressure (present vs absent) and authoritarianism (high vs low) under private information conditions, including the related multiple comparisons.
The results shown in Table 2, Panel A reveal that high authoritarian project managers who are subject to obedience pressure (i.e. Cell 4) escalated their commitment to continue with a failing project, while high authoritarian project managers who were not subject to obedience pressure (i.e., Cell 2) did not escalate their commitment to continue with a failing project. As expected, the results presented in Table 2, Panel B show that the difference between the mean preference scores in Cell 2 (5.93) and Cell 4 (2.47) is statistically significant (mean difference = 3.46, p < 0.01, 1-tailed). These results suggest that high authoritarian project managers tended to continue a failing project only when they were subject to obedience pressure. Taken together, these results support H4. Fig. 2 illustrates these results.
