Browsing by Author "Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar"

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Open Access
Arguing to defeat: eristic argumentation and irrationality in resolving moral concerns
(Springer, 2020) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar; Ateş, N. Y.
By synthesizing the argumentation theory of new rhetoric with research on heuristics and motivated reasoning, we develop a conceptual view of argumentation based on reasoning motivations that sheds new light on the morality of decision-making. Accordingly, we propose that reasoning in eristic argumentation is motivated by psychological (e.g., anxiety reduction) or material (e.g., vested interests) gains that do not depend on resolving the problem in question truthfully. Contrary to heuristic argumentation, in which disputants genuinely argue to reach a practically rational solution, eristic argumentation aims to defeat the counterparty rather than seeking a reasonable solution. Eristic argumentation is susceptible to arbitrariness and power abuses; therefore, it is inappropriate for making moral judgments with the exception of judgments concerning moral taboos, which are closed to argumentation by their nature. Eristic argumentation is also problematic for strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making because it impedes the search for the right heuristic under uncertainty as an ecologically rational choice. However, our theoretical view emphasizes that under extreme uncertainty, where heuristic solutions are as fallible as any guesses, pretense reasoning by eristic argumentation may be instrumental for its adaptive benefts. Expanding the concept of eristic argumentation based on reasoning motivations opens a new path for studying the psychology of reasoning in connection to morality and decision-making under uncertainty. We discuss the implications of our theoretical view to relevant research streams, including ethical, strategic and entrepreneurial decision-making.
Open Access
Brand foreignness and anger decrease purchase intentions of ethnocentric consumers for national icon products
(Ege Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, 2023-05-10) Yilmaz, A.; Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar
The marketing literature lacks a thorough understanding of how emotions change ethnocentric consumers’ brand quality perceptions and purchase intentions when there are two different nationality signals about the product evaluated (i.e., product nationality signal vs brand nationality signal). To address this gap, we conducted an empirical study (mixed-design ANOVA) with ethnocentric consumers to test whether anger and sadness change purchasing intentions and perceptions of brand quality for fictitious brands across two different product types (national icon product vs non-national icon product). The regression analysis indicates that when ethnocentric consumers are induced to feel anger, their purchase intentions for national icon products decrease significantly when the product has a foreign brand image. Because incidental anger (i.e., the feeling of anger carried over from a situation unrelated to the decision at hand) triggers stereotypical reasoning, angry ethnocentric consumers seem to focus on the nationality image of the brand rather than the nationality image of the product class (i.e., national icon products signaling a nation’s heritage). Our study displays the powerful impact of incidental emotions on ethnocentric consumers’ judgment and decision-making for brands with foreign vs domestic images.
Open Access
Decision-making under extreme uncertainty: Eristic rather than heuristic
(Emerald Publishing Limited, 2023-01-02) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar; Ateş, Y. N.; Lerner, D. A.
Purpose – This paper aims to introduce eristic decision-making in entrepreneurship. A decision is eristically made when it utilizes eristics, which are action-triggering short-cuts that draw on hedonic urges (e.g. sensationseeking). Unlike heuristics, eristic decision-making is not intendedly rational as eristics lead to decision-making without calculating or even considering the consequences of actions. Eristics are adaptive when uncertainty is extreme. Completely novel strategies, nascent venturing, corporate venturing for radical innovation and adapting to shocks (e.g. pandemic) are typically subject to extreme uncertainties. Design/methodology/approach – In light of the relevant debates in entrepreneurship, psychology and decision sciences, the paper builds new conceptual links to establish its theoretical claims through secondary research. Findings – The paper posits that people adapt to extreme uncertainty by using eristic reasoning rather than heuristic reasoning. Heuristic reasoning allows boundedly rational decision-makers to use qualitative cues to estimate the consequences of actions and to make reasoned decisions. By contrast, eristic reasoning ignores realistic calculations and considerations about the future consequences of actions and produces decisions guided by hedonic urges. Originality/value – Current entrepreneurial research on uncertainty usually focuses on moderate levels of uncertainty where heuristics and other intendedly rational decision-making approaches pay off. By contrast, this paper focuses on extreme uncertainty where eristics are adaptive. While not intendedly rational, the adaptiveness of eristic reasoning offers theoretically and psychologically grounded new explanations about action under extreme uncertainty.
Open Access
Eristic legitimation of controversial managerial decisions
(Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2023-10-12) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar; Islam, G.
This paper investigates the eristic legitimation of managerial decisions – managerial interactions to win without reasoned persuasion of the counterparty – in the context of career-advancement disputes. This mode of legitimation can be ethically questionable, particularly when powerful managers have the licence for it, while less powerful subordinates may have ‘no other choice’ than reasoned persuasion to address their concerns. The present study involves two sets of interviews to explore eristic legitimations and associated moral and political processes. The first involves former employees who had career advancement disputes with their former managers, and the second, HR professionals with expertise in dealing with employee complaints. Our analysis suggests that managing unfairness concerns can be destructive when managerial authorities argue eristically by exploiting ambiguities around performance, tasks, goals and moral principles. The novelty of this study is that it explores how ambiguities shape managerial handling of employees’ justice concerns and how eristic legitimations during ethical decision-making can have deleterious consequences for organizations and individual careers. While this study contributes to research on the rhetorical strategies of managers, it has important implications for interactional justice and ethical decision-making research.
Open Access
Eristic reasoning: adaptation to extreme uncertainty
(Frontiers Research Foundation, 2023-02-09) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar; Jekel, M.; Ateş, N. Y.
Heuristics (shortcut solution rules) can help adaptation to uncertainty by leading to sufficiently accurate decisions with little information. However, heuristics would fail under extreme uncertainty where information is so scarce that any heuristic would be highly misleading for accuracy-seeking. Thus, under very high levels of uncertainty, decision-makers rely on heuristics to no avail. We posit that eristic reasoning (i.e., self-serving inferences for hedonic pursuits), rather than heuristic reasoning, is adaptive when uncertainty is extreme, as eristic reasoning produces instant hedonic gratifications helpful for coping. Eristic reasoning aims at hedonic gains (e.g., relief from the anxiety of uncertainty) that can be pursued by self-serving inferences. As such, eristic reasoning does not require any information about the environment as it instead gets cues introspectively from bodily signals informing what the organism hedonically needs as shaped by individual differences. We explain how decision-makers can benefit from heuristic vs. eristic reasoning under different levels of uncertainty. As a result, by integrating the outputs of formerly published empirical research and our conceptual discussions pertaining to eristic reasoning, we conceptually criticize the fast-and-frugal heuristics approach, which implies that heuristics are the only means of adapting to uncertainty.
Open Access
The mirage of procedural justice and the primacy of interactional justice in organizations
(Springer, 2020) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar
This paper offers a novel situational approach to study organizational justice in which the proposed unit of analysis is managerial behavior manifested in argumentation rather than employee justice perceptions. The currently dominant theoretical framework in justice research, which is built on justice perceptions, neglects the unique features of organizational order and vulnerability of procedural justice perceptions. As the procedural justice concept belongs chiefly to a spontaneous market order under which the rule of law is made possible, it is inappropriate to transfer this concept to an organization in which the rule of authority is dominant. Therefore, except the limited legal domain in which managerial freedom is restrained by laws, procedural justice in organizations represents a mirage that can give rise to hypocritical managerial actions that can legitimate morally controversial outcomes via eristic tactics. In contrast, interactional justice is of great importance to organizations in that employees and organizations can ensure their rational economic exchanges without deception. However, current formulations of interactional justice often regard interactions as a palliative recipe designed to alleviate reactions to outcomes and not as a constituent of distributive justice. Perelman’s argumentation theory can offer a new conceptualization of interactional justice that addresses this gap.
Open Access
Puritanical moral rules as moral heuristics coping with uncertainties
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-10) Kurdoğlu, Rasim Serdar
As the cultural evolution of a puritanical moral norm in Turkey illustrates, puritanical moral norms are not developed by nonrational reasoning concerned with purity and cleanliness. People utilize puritanical moral rules as moral heuristics for making intendedly rational decisions about whether to cooperate or not when the commitment of the counterparty is uncertain.