Personal Details

Name:  Maria Blekher

Work Address:  The Department of Management, Guilford Glazer Faculty of Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

E-mail: kushner@bgu.ac.il

Phone: 972-54-7550697

Educational Background

2009-                             Ph.D. candidate Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

Advisors: Dr. Shai Danziger and Dr. Amir Grinstein

Research topic: Unexpected Outcomes of Corporate Social Responsibility: When Doing Good Makes You Risky and Self-Rewarding

2006-2009                     MBA, specialization in Marketing, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel (Cum Laude)

MBA Research Thesis “The effect of the number of consumer posted product reviews on purchase intent from online retailers”, under the supervision of Dr. Shai Danziger

2003-2006                     BA, Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel (Cum Laude)

Academic Experience

2006- Present                Junior Staff, Ben-Gurion University

1. Lecturer in Marketing Research and Marketing Principles at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

2.  Instructor in “Business Management in Israel”- final project of the Department of Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

3. Teaching Assistant for Marketing, Consumer Behavior and Strategy courses, BA, MBA and Executive programs at Guilford Glazer School of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

Additional Academic Activities

2009- Reviewer, European Journal of Marketing

Research Work in Progress

Danziger Shai, Maria Blekher. "The effect of the number of consumer posted product reviews on purchase intent from online retailers."

Research interests: social marketing, marketing strategy, consumer behavior and decision making            

Research Abstract: Corporations are investing an increasing amount of resources into actions aimed at furthering social welfare. Heretofore, research has demonstrated the benefits firms may generate from engaging in such corporate social responsibility (CSR; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2009; Margolis and Walsh, 2001).  The proposed research, examines the counterintuitive prediction that top management teams’ (TMTs) decisions to engage in CSR may bias subsequent decision making in unrelated domains, and by doing so, potentially negatively influence corporate behavior. Building on the individual-level theory of licensing (Khan and Dhar, 2007; Mazar and Zhong, 2010), which posits that an individual’s pro-social behavior “licenses,” or permits, negative behavior we propose that top managers’ decisions to engage in CSR activities may license risky decisions (e.g., development of radical innovations and greater investment in internationalization activity) and self-rewarding decisions (e.g., approval of higher bonuses and long-term incentives for themselves).

I believe the findings will be of broad interest both to academics and laypeople and will carry significant policy implications. The proposed studies offer several important contributions to existing research: they will be the first to examine whether investing in CSR may lead to potentially negative organizational consequences; they will compare corporate and individual ethical behavior; and they will test the generality of the licensing phenomenon by examining whether expert decision makers (TMT members) show a licensing effect and whether merely voting in favor of  a “pro-social action” is sufficient to trigger licensing.