The Escalation of Commitment to a Course of Action (1981) [pdf]
gwern.net
gwern.net
See Strategy of Conflict. Backing down on a commitment to fight is very bad in repeated games.
It sounds like maybe they were trying to make it work rather than justifying it.
In a section titled Norms for Consistency, it talks a bit about President Carter and the importance of your convictions.
I think most likely this is really about the importance of leaders being wise and knowledgeable to a degree that exceeds the comprehension of the average person. People who don't understand your decision judge you based on how unflinchingly confident you are in it's correctness even though other people don't understand it, don't think it's a good idea (presumably because they don't understand it) and are against it because they have some conflicting agenda (such as personal gain).
It's 11 pages. I can't manage to finish it in one sitting but it looks like a worthwhile read.
As a successful administrator you are likely to double down on failures rather than let them fail. With the goal to recoup your losses from the first round.
This tends to mirror my experience with large organizations. Projects tied to a manager are rarely canceled unless the manager leaves (willingly or not). I wouldn't be surprised if unicorns had a similar trajectory of justifying previous losses with even bigger bets.
You still need to keep the hopeless project on the books, but usually there’s a plan b that comes out of the ashes at some point.
It's double amusing since the paper starts by outlining multiple cases where an administration of company stuck to decision to ultimate failure, yet the one example that you chose to single out is the one about president Carter being seen as waffling.