The “escalation phenomenon” (Staw 1976; Staw and Ross 1978) refers to the tendency for decision makers to “throw good money after bad,” that is, to invest beyond the point where benefits equal costs. The commonly accepted view is that such 'escalation” occurs as a result of decision makers becoming overcommitted to a previously chosen course of action through a series of decision errors. This paper presents a generic system dynamics model of resource recommitment behavior that is able to produce “escalation” without the presence of decision error. Implications of this model to the theory and practice of project management are discussed.