When authority biases the holder: The case of the Costa Concordia disaster

Purpose We aim to understand how authority fosters overconfident behaviors and turns into myopic discretion. We explore this theoretical issue through the analysis of the decisions involved in the Costa Concordia disaster that occurred in January 2012 when the cruise ship Costa Concordia (carrying 4,229 people) hit an underwater rock and partially sank, resulting in 32 deaths. Design/methodology/approach By employing the methodology of exploratory case studies and using data recorded by the electronic devices on the ship, which were reported in the official Sentences of the trial, we accurately reconstructed the detailed timeline of the decisions leading to the disaster. Findings The case study illustrates the role of authority in the Captain’s overconfident decisions and shows that authority magnifies overconfidence to the point where myopic discretion substitutes rational scrutiny. Our analysis extends the classical notion of authority bias (which refers to the tendency of individuals to attribute higher credibility to the opinion of an authority) and demonstrates that authority biases not only other individuals but also the person who holds that authority. We define ‘authority self-bias’ as the systematic tendency of an individual to attribute higher credibility to her/his own discretionary decisions if the individual holds authority. Originality The case study sheds light on the pathologically reversed relations between the source of authority and its prerogatives. It shows that authority holders unwittingly substitute legitimate decisional prerogatives with confidence in making good discretionary decisions.