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Breaking Up is Hard to Do: Irrational Overcommitment in an Industry Peer Network

The paper puts a key claim of contemporary economic sociology and organization theory-that the prevalence of strong ties among capitalists cannot be reduced to the utility of such ties-on firmer theoretical and empirical footing. An important limitation in our ability to be confident in this claim is addressed: the reliance on an external standard of rationality, whereby irrationality is judged relative to an observer’s judgment as to what an actor’s interests should be. To address this limitation, we: (a) develop an internal standard for assessing irrational overcommitment, whereby an actor exhibits irrationality if he acts in a manner that is inconsistent with his own preferences; (b) clarify the mechanisms that produce such “akratic” overcommitment— short-term emotions that overwhelm rational calculation and a sense of loyalty that leads one to incorporate others’ interests into one’s own; and (c) present results from two studies of an industry peer network (IPN) in the remodeling construction industry, which test for akratic overcommitment and illuminate the mechanisms involved. Results from these studies indicate that there is significant akratic overcommitment to this IPN and that the key mechanism is the sense of loyalty that members feel towards their friends.