Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2023
  • Working Paper

Leadership and the Value of Persistence

By: James J. Anton, Alan Jaske and Dennis Yao
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
ShareBar

Abstract

Consider a leader’s decision whether to persist with an unsuccessful R&D project or to terminate the project in favor of a new project with an uncertain value. How does that decision affect the effort exerted by the manager assigned to the project? To study this question we build and analyze an equilibrium, infinite-horizon model which embeds a search problem with an agency problem. We assess the policy value of a leader’s persistence instrument under conditions of complete and incomplete information. Among other things, we find that persistence takes advantage of a manager’s incentive to gain access to future, potentially higher-payoff projects to induce effort on the current project. Furthermore, when the leader has superior information about the value of the current project, the manager may choose to delay effort to better take advantage of the information signal provided by the leader’s persistence choice.

Keywords

Persistence; Project Evaluation; R&D Project Management; Projects; Decision Choices and Conditions; Leadership

Citation

Anton, James J., Alan Jaske, and Dennis Yao. "Leadership and the Value of Persistence." Working Paper, January 2023.

About The Author

Dennis A. Yao

Strategy
→More Publications

More from the Authors

    • January 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Fueling a Cleaner Future: ACWA Power and Green Hydrogen

    By: Dennis Yao and Alpana Thapar
    • January 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Beyond Strategic Intuition: Course Introduction

    By: Dennis Yao
    • January 2022
    • Strategic Management Journal

    Pushed into a Crowd: Repositioning Costs, Resources, and Competition in the RTE Cereal Industry

    By: Young Hou and Dennis Yao
More from the Authors
  • Fueling a Cleaner Future: ACWA Power and Green Hydrogen By: Dennis Yao and Alpana Thapar
  • Beyond Strategic Intuition: Course Introduction By: Dennis Yao
  • Pushed into a Crowd: Repositioning Costs, Resources, and Competition in the RTE Cereal Industry By: Young Hou and Dennis Yao
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College