Organizational Partnerships in China: Self-Interest, Goal Interdependence, and Opportunism.

Abstract

Opportunism in organizational partnerships may be understood in terms of how partners conclude that their self-interests are related to each other. When partners believe that their goals are competitively but not cooperatively related, they are tempted to pursue their self-interests opportunistically. Cognitive understandings and values of a shared vision may help partners believe their goals are cooperatively related. Results from 103 pairs of customer and supplier organizations support the argument that partnerships are not inevitably threatened by opportunism. Using structural equation analysis, the authors suggested that shared vision can help partners develop cooperative goals that lead to low levels of opportunism. These results suggest that a shared vision and cooperative goals are important foundations for effective organizational partnerships.

Development and test of a model of external organizational commitment in human resources outsourcing

“…According to social exchange theory, the development of affective commitment and personal relationships provides a mechanism other than dependency and switching costs to prolong the relationship between partners. Our findings are also consistent with recent research revealing that a shared vision can help partner organizations to believe that their goals are cooperatively related so that they do not feel threatened by opportunistic behavior (Wong, Tjosvold, & Yu, 2005).…”

How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms

“…First, many if not most studies rely on one-sided inquiry methods with single key informants (e.g., Carson et al 2006;Poppo et al 2008). In order to capture the dyadic nature of strategic alliances (Gulati 1998) and the different perspectives on trust and alliance performance, future research could implement two-sided measurement approaches including (2009) How managers can build trust in strategic alliances multiple respondents (e.g., Wong et al 2005). Those approaches bear the chance to shed light on both concurrent and incongruent perceptions of trust and performance.…”

Perverse Effects of Other-Referenced Performance Goals in an Information Exchange Context

“…So, tactical impression management may be the appropriate strategy to subtly convince their interaction partners that the information they receive is indeed accurate and helpful. Thus, performance goal individuals may prevent detection of their own performance goal (''outperforming others'') by subtly masking their deceptive behavior (Wathne and Heide 2000;Wong et al 2005). Hence, the competence of exchange partners may guide the tactical deception considerations made by performance goal individuals to cover their deceptive behavior.…”