Business Goal Difficulty and Socially Irresponsible Executive Behavior: The Mediating Role of Focalism
通过三项研究，发现商业目标难度会降低高管考虑社会责任的倾向，而聚焦主义（一种基于情感预测理论的认知偏差）在其中起中介作用；拓宽高管思维有助于减少社会责任缺失行为。
Executive social irresponsibility has received increasing research attention in recent years, following the consensus for a broader stakeholder approach to managerial decision making. Despite the importance of the subject, there remains insufficient research on contextual factors that mold executives’ orientation toward social responsibility. Through three studies, we demonstrate that difficult business goals can reduce executives’ tendency to consider social responsibility in their decision making. Further, we find that focalism—a cognitive bias based on affective forecasting theory—can mediate positive relationships between business goal difficulty and socially irresponsible executive behavior. Our findings also suggest that, expanding executives’ thought processes beyond the narrow focus of a business goal achievement can be a good strategy in reducing socially irresponsible executive behavior, even in the presence of difficult goals.