AHORROS DE TIEMPO

Our experimental scenario was consistent with typical escalation situations in which individuals embark on a course of action, at a later point in time receive negative feedback concerning the previously chosen course of action, and then must decide whether or not to continue the same course of action (Brockner 1992b). Our experiment involved two phases. In Phase 1, we introduced an escalation scenario that involved whether or not to launch a software project as scheduled despite negative feedback. This type of product launch decision scenario has been used before in escalation research (Keil et al. 2007a). In our scenario, participants were told that for the past year they had been responsible for developing a specialized software program that controls the intensity and targeting of an external radiation beam for treating cancer tumors. They were told that the product is scheduled to be launched next week, but just today a critical software defect was discovered that could under extremely rare circumstances result in increased doses of radiation. Participants were further informed that the CEO of the company had told them to ignore the defect completely and ordered them to launch the product as scheduled. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to respond to questions concerning anticipated guilt and their willingness to launch the product as scheduled (escalation). Measures for anticipated guilt were adapted from Lindsey (2005) and escalation measures were adapted from Keil et al. (2000b) and Lee et al. (2012).

In Phase 2, we introduced the manipulations of perspective taking and personal cost. Specifically, the manipulation of perspective taking was informed by Hoever et al. (2012). Participants in the perspective taking treatment group were asked to put themselves in the shoes

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of someone whose mother may suffer from radiation sickness caused by the software bug, whereas participants in the non-perspective taking group (i.e., control group) did not receive this instruction. As for the manipulation of personal cost, participants in the high cost group were told that other employees who disobeyed the CEO were scolded and denied promotions (a high personal cost associated with de-escalation), whereas participants in the low cost group were informed that the CEO was tolerant towards disobedience and employees still received expected promotions (a low personal cost associated with de-escalation). Following the manipulations, participants were asked to respond to the same sets of questions used in Phase 1 concerning anticipated guilt and their willingness to launch the product as scheduled. Further, participants were asked to answer four manipulation check questions; two for the perspective taking manipulation and two for the personal cost manipulation. Lastly, participants were asked to answer some demographic questions relating to age, gender, and work experience. The actual scenario is shown in Appendix 3-A, and a complete list of measures is shown in Appendix 3-B. All measures were based on seven-point Likert scales with the exception of anticipated guilt, which was measured using a semantic differential scale anchored from “not at all” (1) to “extremely” (7).

3.3.3. Results

3.3.3.1. Manipulation Checks and Descriptive Statistics

In order to assess whether or not the manipulations were effective, we first created a composite variable for the two perspective taking manipulation checks, and another composite variable for the two personal cost manipulation checks. Next, we examined the mean value of the perspective taking treatment group1_{, which was 5.20 on a 7-point scale (n = 97, M = 5.20, SD}

1 _{Participants in the perspective taking control group did not receive the manipulation check questions for} perspective taking because they did not receive the perspective taking manipulation.

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= 1.46). This indicated that the perspective taking manipulation was effective. Furthermore, the results of a one-way ANOVA indicated that the personal cost manipulation was effective (Perdue and Summers 1986). The mean difference between the high cost group (n = 80, M = 5.75, SD = 1.15) and low cost group (n = 91, M = 3.86, SD = 1.58) was statistically significant, and in the expected direction (F(1, 169) = 78.20, p < 0.001). The mean values of manipulation checks in each treatment group are summarized in Figure 3-3.

Figure 3-3. Mean Values of Manipulation Checks by Treatment Condition

Next, we created change scores using Phase 1 and Phase 2 measures. Specifically, we created a change score for each of the anticipated guilt and willingness to launch measures by subtracting Phase 1 responses from Phase 2 responses. We chose this change-score approach in order to examine the impact of perspective taking on anticipated guilt and willingness to launch. Change-scores are frequently used in medical research (e.g., Powers et al. (2013)) and business

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research (e.g., Wowak et al. (2011)) research that involves a pre-test/post-test experimental design (e.g., assessing weight loss by measuring a change in weight before and after a diet program) such as ours (e.g., assessing de-escalation of commitment by measuring a change in the escalation behavior before and after perspective taking). While using a change score is sometimes criticized for such issues as low reliability and ambiguity of interpretation (Klein et al. 2009), such criticisms are largely against “models that utilize a match between two (different) variables” (Klein et al. 2009) (i.e., taking a difference score between two matched variables that are conceptually different2), whereas our experiment involved repeated-measures (i.e., measuring change in the same variable between Phase 1 and Phase 2) in a pre-test/post-test experimental design. Further, our change scores showed acceptable reliability (see Table 3-2) (Straub et al. 2004), and our theorizing was centered on changes in anticipated guilt (H2) and willingness to launch (H3) caused by perspective taking as opposed to a match between two different variables.

Table 3-2. Descriptive Statistics and Reliability of Experiment 1a

Variable Mean SD Cronbach's _α 1 2 3 4

1 Willingness to Launch -0.471 1.281 0.848 - 2 Perspective Takingb _{- - - -0.230}** _- 3 Personal Costb _{- - - 0.231}** _{-0.056 -} 4 Anticipated Guiltc _{0.419 0.942 0.765 -0.304}** _0.197** _{-0.111 -} a. *: p < 0.05, **: p < 0.01, ***: p < 0.001

b. Experimentally manipulated between-subject variables

c. The first and fifth items measuring anticipated guilt (i.e., AGLT1 and AGLT5) were excluded from analyses due to low item loadings in the PLS measurement model

2 _{A typical example of matched variables that are conceptually different would be the customer expectations of} service provider vs. customer perceptions of service provider performance. In such case, the difference score represents the quality of the service provider.

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Because it is not recommended to mix the dependent variable (i.e., willingness to launch product as scheduled) variables with the mediator (i.e., anticipated guilt) in a single factor analysis (Straub et al. 2004), we chose to use SmartPLS (Ringle et al. 2005) to assess the measurement model. With the exception of the first and fifth item for anticipated guilt (i.e., AGLT1 and AGLT 5), all item loadings were above the suggested threshold of 0.707 (Chin 1998) with their respective constructs as shown in Table 3-3. We decided to exclude the AGLT1 and AGLT5 because anticipated guilt was modeled as reflective and the items were interchangeable and highly correlated. Thus, we judged that dropping these items would not significantly reduce content validity (Gerbing and Anderson 1988; Straub et al. 2004).

Table 3-3. Item Loadings, Cross-Loadings and Average Variance Extracted (AVE)

Construct Item 1 2 AVE

1. Anticipated Guilt AGLT1 0.700 -0.048 0.572

AGLT2 0.783 -0.250 AGLT3 0.822 -0.252 AGLT4 0.803 -0.253 AGLT5 0.661 -0.096 2. Willingness to Launch Product ESC1 -0.247 0.939 0.868 ESC2 -0.248 0.924

The measurement model was assessed again after the exclusion of AGLT1 and AGLT 5. All item loadings were above 0.81 with their intended latent variables, and all item cross- loadings were below 0.29 with other variables. In addition, the AVE values for anticipated guilt and willingness to launch were 0.68 and 0.87 respectively, indicating that more variance was captured by the construct measures relative to measurement error (Fornell and Larcker 1981).

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Furthermore the AVE for each latent variable exceeded the squared correlation of anticipated guilt and willingness to launch (i.e., r2 _{= 0.03), showing that more variance associated with each} latent variable was captured by its measures rather than the measures of other latent variables (Fornell and Larcker 1981). Overall, these results provided strong support for our measurement model and convergent/discriminant validity.