Fostering Risk Taking in Research and Development: The Importance of a Project's Terminal Value
大型企业在管理高风险项目组合时面临矛盾：项目成功率低时，团队成员愿冒险，但高层管理者却减少资源投入，抑制冒险。研究发现，项目终值（失败后仍留存在企业的价值）能正向促进风险承担，企业应关注终值以化解矛盾。
ABSTRACT Large firms face a conflict in managing a portfolio of high‐risk projects. When an ongoing project is thought to have a low likelihood of success, project team members take risks to improve its chances of success. However, upper‐level managers who allocate resources tend to withhold resources from a project with a low likelihood of success in favor of others in the portfolio that look more promising. Because this paucity of resources influences project team members to avoid risk, the total effect of success likelihood on risk taking is conflicted. The influence on risk taking of a project's terminal value—defined as the value that remains in the firm in the event of project failure—is unequivocally positive, because both senior management resource allocation and project team risk‐taking propensity are encouraged by terminal value. Thus, firms can override the ambivalent effect of likelihood of success on project decision making by focusing attention on a project's terminal value.