Threat-Rigidity Hypothesis

For economists (and also sociologists or psychologists) – no matter if they are students,
practitioners or researchers – the behavior of individuals, groups or entire organizations (e. g.
companies) under special circumstances like threat, adversity or radical environmental change
is an important issue. For researchers to find underlying principles of behavior under threat
and for practitioners to learn some basic rules for behaving in changing environments.
Imagine a winter in our alps without any snow. There have always been times with less snow.
In such case snow making machines did their job and sprinkled the slope with artificial snow.
The lesser snow the more snow making machines was the easy calculus in past years. So will
there be an even larger number of snow making machines on the slopes if there is absolutely
no snow due to global warming and the upcoming climate crisis? Or will there some
alternatives be developed? According to an recent article in DerStandard (16. december 2006,
p. 2), wintertourism has to change its face, additional offers have to be presented, away form
ski and snowboard toward wellness, mountain biking or hiking. So what will entrepreneurs in
skiing resorts do? Will the rely on well-learned behavior and put another snow making
machine beside the slope, or will they consider alternatives?
There are numerous studies treating behavior under threat or radical change of environmental
conditions. Six papers – among them the basic paper for this work, Staw et al’s1 analysis of
threat-rigidity effects in organizational behavior – will subsequently be examined with regard
to consistencies or contradictions. As already mentioned, Staw et al’s paper will be regarded
as the basis for this seminar paper, as it points out most clearly threat-rigidity effects at
different levels of analysis. Moreover it is 1.) the oldest reviewed article and seems to have
some influence on threat-rigidity research in recent decades and 2.) represents a
comprehensive literature review in contrast to the other – mainly empirical – papers and
therefore presents a fine overview for our topic. Therefore chapter two will start with brief
discussions of the Threat-Rigidity Hypothesis and Threat-Rigidity Effects on the individualleve,
group-level and organizational-level as described in Staw et. al’s paper.