Owing to the human being's self-interest seeking nature, opportunism is a pervasive phenomenon in channel relationships (Williamson 1975; 1985). Having noted the common occurrence of opportunism and its toxic impact on marketing channels, a growing body of research has discussed the drivers and possible control mechanisms of distributor opportunism from a variety of theoretical perspectives (John 1984; Tangpong, Hung, and Ro 2010). Mostly, these researchers focus on the observed effects of particular factors or mechanisms on a party's opportunism within a dyadic relationship (e.g., a distributor-manufacturer relationship).According to agency theory and transaction cost theory, opportunism in inter-firm relationships arises as a consequence of two parties' goal incongruence and environment/task uncertainty (Eisenhardt 1989; Bergen, Dutta, and Walker 1992; Rindfleisch and Heide 1997).
展开▼
