Efeito sunk cost e a racionalidade limitada: Uma análise sobre o processo de decisão dos gestores de indústrias

Abstract

The industries generally carry out high volumes of investment for their growth and increase of profits, and also for allocating investments to property, plant and equipment used in their productive activity. Such investments consume a significant portion of capital and, therefore, managers need to make difficult decisions and still be agile in order not to waste time and money. However, decisions are not always error-free and are subject to factors that influence decision making so that the manager, faced with a lost cost, opts to remain in an investment that no longer has a return. When the manager, in his limited rationality, chooses to stay on projects that will no longer be economically viable, he is being influenced by the sunk cost effect. In this study with a quantitative approach and a descriptive character, we sought to describe three hypothetical decision situations in which high, medium and low volumes of financial resources were spent, if managers from different industrial sectors, from the characterization of their expertise, are influenced by the sunk cost effect. The results showed that all 49 (forty-nine) managers that constituted the sample investigated are influenced by the sunk cost effect, regardless of the amount invested, and considered as irrecoverable, and their expertise. However, there were some strong associations between the knowledge of managers with 'higher education' and the non-influence of the sunk cost effect especially when the investment was in an initial stage with only 10% already invested. Also, there were strong associations between the 'high' experience time and the non-influence of sunk costs, even in the higher volumes already invested between 90% and 50%.