PhD Defence: Laura Maria Giurge
In her dissertation ‘A Test of Time: A Temporal and Dynamic Approach to Power and Ethics’, ERIM’s Laura Giurge zooms-in on two crucial organizational behaviors that are bound to vary from one day to another: decision-making and unethical behavior. Next, this study investigates the underlying cognitive process that drives unethical behavior, moral reasoning, and aims to show that even this stable developmental cognitive process is susceptible to momentary influences.
Laura Giurge defended her dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Friday, 24 March 2017 at 09:30. Her supervisor was Prof. Marius van Dijke and her co-supervisors were Prof. David de Cremer and Dr Xue Michelle Zheng. Other members of the Doctoral Committee were Prof. Steffen Giessner (RSM), Dr Daan Stam (RSM), Prof. Jennifer Jordan (IMD), Prof. Joep Cornelissen (RSM), and Dr Ana Guinote (UCL)
About Laura M. Giurge
Laura Maria Giurge born in Baia Mare, Romania, joined ERIM and started her Ph.D. at Rotterdam School of Management in 2012. Before that, she obtained two Cum Laude Master of Science Degrees from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands: one in Human Resources Management and one in Economics and Business with a focus on Organizational Behavior. Laura also obtained a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration (in English) from Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Romania.
Laura’s research lies at the intersection of management and social psychology and centers on topics such as time, power, unethical behavior, and decision-making. Part of the research presented in her dissertation takes a more in-depth approach to these topics by zooming-in, via the experience sampling methodology, on individuals’ daily experiences and behaviors as they unfold within the natural work environment. She presented her research at various international conferences including Academy of Management, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Her work has been published in Human Relations and The International Journal of Human Resource Management (not in this dissertation) or is under review at important management and psychology journals.
Aside from research, Laura has a passion for art that she currently pursues via painting and photography. A selection of her photography was exposed in 2016 at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Part of her photography is also on permanent display in the Business-Society Management Department, on the 12th floor of the Mandeville Building at Erasmus University Rotterdam. More of her work can be found on her website: www.lauramgiurge.com.
Thesis Abstract
Both behavior and cognitive processes are ongoing, dynamic, and temporal. They vary not only between individuals as a function of differences in personality and stable contextual characteristics, but also within. That is, the same person might engage in unethical behavior one day but not the next day. Apart from a few exceptions, research in organizational science has either ignored or treated within-individual fluctuations in behavior as measurement error. Yet, in order to gain a deeper understanding of why individuals behave the way they do we ought to zoom-in on their daily experiences and behaviors and tackle the issue of when and for how long things happen. The first part of this dissertation aims to achieve precisely this by zooming-in on two crucial organizational behaviors that are bound to vary from one day to another: decision-making and unethical behavior. The other part zooms-in even further on an underlying cognitive process that drives unethical behavior, moral reasoning, and aims to show that even this stable developmental cognitive process is susceptible to momentary influences. Taken together, the work presented in this dissertation contributes to various streams of research from power to moral psychology. It illustrates the importance of addressing the dynamic and temporal variations in behavior as well as in the underlying cognitive processes that drive behavior.
Photos: Chris Gorzeman / Capital Images
