Irina Cojuharenco

One Person in the Battlefield is Not a Warrior: Self-Construal, Perceived Ability to Make a Difference, and Socially Responsible Behavior

We suggest that cultivating an individuals connectedness to others promotes socially responsible behavior both directly and indirectly – through increased perceived ability to make a difference. Individuals whose interdependent self is more prominent feel they have more of an impact on larger scale societal outcomes and, therefore, engage more in socially responsible behaviors than do individuals whose independent self is more prominent. We test these hypotheses in two experiments in which participants make financial contributions or exert an effort for a social cause. In a survey, we find that perceived effectiveness mediates the effect of self-construal on socially responsible consumption.

Strike a happy medium: the effect of it knowledge on venture capitalists' overconfidence in it investments

In this article, the effect of IT knowledge on the overconfidence of venture capitalists (VCs) in their IT investments is examined. Our findings show that the effect of IT knowledge on overconfidence is nonlinear. VCs with moderate levels of IT knowledge are least overconfident. At the same time, VCs with moderate levels of IT knowledge are most resistant to the biasing effects of past successes. Past failures show a negative association with overconfidence independent of the level of the VCs IT knowledge. Finally, the negative association between stakes and VC overconfidence is stronger with greater levels of IT knowledge. These results shed light on the highly disputed role of IT knowledge in the domain of IT investments.

Tell Me Who, and I’ll Tell You How Fair: A Model of Agent Bias in Justice Reasoning

A salient and underresearched aspect of un/fair treatment in organizations can be the source of justice, in terms of a specific justice agent. We propose a model of agent bias to describe how and when characteristics of the agent enacting justice are important to justice reasoning. The agent bias is defined as the effect on overall event justice perceptions of specific agent characteristics, over and above the effect via distributive, procedural, and interactional justice. For justice recipients to focus on agent characteristics rather than on the event being evaluated in terms of fairness is an unexplored bias in justice judgments. Agent warmth, competence, and past justice track record (entity justice) are identified as agent characteristics that influence justice judgments. Agent characteristics can influence overall event justice perceptions positively or negatively, depending on the ambiguity in terms of justice of the event and on its expectedness from a particular justice agent. Finally, we propose that agent bias is stronger when justice recipients use intuitive versus analytic information processing of event information. Our model of agent bias has important theoretical implications for theories of organizational justice and for other literatures, as well as important practical implications for organizations and managers.

'Yes, We Can!': Self-construal, Perceived Ability to Make a Difference, and Socially Responsible Behavior

We suggest that an individual’s self-construal — how people view themselves in terms of connectedness to versus separateness from others — affects perceived effectiveness of individual action targeted at large scale societal outcomes, and by doing so, ultimately affects socially responsible behavior. Study 1 demonstrated that increasing the prominence of the interdependent self raises perceived effectiveness of individual action to the level of perceived effectiveness of collective action. Study 2 showed that the prominence of the interdependent self relates positively to the effort exerted for a social cause. In Study 3, we showed experimentally that the perceived effectiveness of individual action mediates the effect of self-construal on financial contributions participants make for a social cause. Study 4 tested the mediation model using survey data on recycling and environmentally conscious consumption. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on socially responsible behavior.