Explaining Buyer Opportunism in Business-to-Business Relationships (open access)

Explaining Buyer Opportunism in Business-to-Business Relationships

The interaction among firms in the supply chain is necessary for business process execution and relationship success. One phenomenon of great significance to buyer-supplier relationships is opportunism. Opportunism is defined as behavior that is self-interest seeking with guile. It is manifested in behaviors such as stealing, cheating, dishonesty, and withholding information. Opportunism negatively impacts relational exchange tenets such as trust, commitment, cooperation, and satisfaction. Furthermore, perceptions of opportunism negatively affect firm performance. In lieu of the known negative effects of opportunistic behavior on buyer-supplier relationships, why do agents continue to engage in opportunistic tactics with their exchange partners? A comprehensive examination is necessary in order to understand why sourcing professionals engage in acts of opportunism. Understanding why opportunism occurs will reveal how to deter it, and this remains a gap in the literature. Based on theories in economics, marketing channels, supply chain management, decision science, and psychology, a comprehensive model tested a set of factors hypothesized to drive the use of opportunistic tactics. Factors include buyer-supplier relationship-specific factors, environmental factors, individual personality-related factors, and situational factors. Data was collected via internet survey of sourcing professionals from private industry and government agencies. Common to many studies of ethics, respondents made choices …
Date: May 2007
Creator: Hawkins, Timothy Glenn
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction for Federal Income Tax: A Federalist Perspective (open access)

The Home Mortgage Interest Deduction for Federal Income Tax: A Federalist Perspective

The debate over federal income tax treatment of home mortgage interest (HMI) has largely overlooked an important, and possibly unintended political and economic consequence of our federal income tax system. The distribution of the for home mortgage interest deduction tax benefit across states is a possible missing consideration. Specifically, this study offers a federalist1 perspective on the federal income tax benefit from the deduction for HMI - one of the largest personal federal tax expenditures on the books. This dissertation analyzes current national political rhetoric from a federalist perspective. Discussion also includes background, current status, and proposed changes to the tax code for of the HMI deduction. First, a Tobit regression is used to analyze the distribution of the HMI tax benefit across states and to test for disproportionate distribution across states in benefit derived from the federal income tax deduction for home mortgage interest beyond that which is explained by income. This initial part of the study is also the precursor to a hierarchical analysis seeking to identify significant factors affecting the distribution of the benefit of the HMI deduction across states. The Ernst and Young/University of Michigan Individual Model File of 1992 tax returns is the primary data …
Date: August 2000
Creator: Ortiz, Dennis S.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Supply Chain Network Evolution: Demand-based Drivers of Interfirm Governance Evolution (open access)

Supply Chain Network Evolution: Demand-based Drivers of Interfirm Governance Evolution

Which form of exchange governance performs better in a dynamic environment? This remains an unanswered question in the transaction cost analysis (TCA) and relational exchange literatures. Some researchers purport that transactional governance provides superior performance by providing firms the flexibility to change suppliers. Others suggest that relational governance leads to superior performance because of the willingness of both parties to adapt. Reviews of TCA have turned up ambivalent empirical findings with regard to the effects of uncertainty despite a track record of strong empirical support for other predictions. Because most of TCA and relational exchange theories' predictions enjoy strong support, this research builds upon these theories to propose a theoretical modeling framework for a dynamic environment in a supply chain network (SCN) setting. This dissertation extends TCA and relational exchange to a dynamic, network environment. It uses the approach of building a simulation in order to study in detail the relationship between key exchange factors and the selection of transactional and relational exchange governance over time. This research effort extended TCA theory with a complex adaptive model of supply chain network governance evolution that attempts to link environmental, network, production, firm and exchange factors in a continuously evolving loop. The …
Date: August 2007
Creator: Gravier, Michael J.
System: The UNT Digital Library
An empirical investigation of how perceived devaluation and income effects influence consumers' intended utilization of savings from coupon redemption. (open access)

An empirical investigation of how perceived devaluation and income effects influence consumers' intended utilization of savings from coupon redemption.

Coupons are one of the most popular and attractive tools of promotion. Redeeming coupons makes shoppers feel that they are doing something good for their family's budget, because coupons offer 'savings.' On the other hand, a coupon might have several negative effects on purchase behavior as well, which might 'devalue' the promoted product in the consumer's perception. But a review of the literature shows a lack of attention afforded to the above-mentioned aspects of coupon redemption. In addition, the consumer's coupon redemption behavior is moderated by several factors drawn from research in the fields of market pricing, economics and psychology, each of which have contributed to the current study in their own way. Finally, there does not exist any substantive research as to why coupon redemption rates have been on the decline, despite an increase in distribution of coupons. Therefore, this research not only fills existing gaps in the literature but also enriches it by synthesizing views from different academic disciplines. This dissertation concentrates on grocery products. Data is collected from about 2500 adults, primarily residing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The conceptual framework is based on the theory of reasoned action, which suggests that an individual's beliefs influence his/her …
Date: August 2007
Creator: Barat, Somjit
System: The UNT Digital Library
Internal Capital Market and Capital Misallocation: Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs (open access)

Internal Capital Market and Capital Misallocation: Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs

This study investigates the importance of reduced capital misallocation in explaining the gains in corporate spinoffs. The capital misallocation hypothesis asserts that the internal capital market of a diversified firm fails to meet the needs of the relatively low growth divisions for less investment and the needs of the relatively high growth divisions for more investment. Higher differences in growth opportunities imply that more capital is misallocated. This study finds that the higher the difference in growth opportunities of a diversified firm's businesses, the more likely the firm is to conduct a spinoff. This finding supports the argument that diversified firms conduct spinoffs to reduce capital misallocation. This study finds differences in managerial ownership of spinoff firms and of nonspinoff firms. This suggests that the misallocation of internal capital is an agency problem. A low management ownership stake, coupled with the existing differential in growth opportunities between parent and spunoff firms, leads to misallocation of internal capital, thus creating incentives for a spinoff. Spinoffs should result in a shift to the “right" investment policy and to better operating performance for both the parent and spunoff firms. This improvement in operating performance for the post-spinoff firms is expected to be higher …
Date: August 2001
Creator: Warganegara, Dezie L
System: The UNT Digital Library
An Empirical Examination of Service Dominant Logic: The Theory of the Network (open access)

An Empirical Examination of Service Dominant Logic: The Theory of the Network

Marketing scholars question the ability of the 4Ps to explain higher order phenomena in modern marketing. Scholars contend that marketing's historical framework, based in product centric economic theory, constrains the 4Ps ability to form a foundation for a general theory of marketing. The focus on value embedded in product fails to explain knowledge-based intangible sources of competitive advantage. In response to this concern a new dominant logic for marketing called service-dominant logic (S-D Logic) has been proposed. However, not all scholars are supportive of S-D Logic. Still nescient, S-D Logic lacks a theoretic model, operationalized constructs, and relationships between those constructs. This study addresses those deficiencies by: (1) generation of a grounded theory of a performance-oriented network; (2) empirical assessment of the S-D Logic literature; and (3) development of an inductively generated theory of S-D Logic to include constructs, relationships, outcomes, and hypothesis. This investigation provides an important set of research findings. The resultant service-oriented network theory suggests a theoretic structure for S-D Logic. Use of grounded theory provides a strong empirical foundation based in a leading edge multi-national market segment composed corporations and programs worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The analysis drew upon 44 field interviews and follow-up …
Date: August 2007
Creator: Randall, Wesley Spencer
System: The UNT Digital Library
Understanding knowledge management and organizational adaptation and the influencing effects of trust and industrial cluster. (open access)

Understanding knowledge management and organizational adaptation and the influencing effects of trust and industrial cluster.

Due to rapid environmental change, today's business requires a more collaborative management to ensure positive performance. One of the important means that can help firms adapt successfully to a changing environment is knowledge management. The management of information and knowledge as key to retaining competitive advantage and has recently evolved into a more strategically focused research topic for both business and academic study. Managing knowledge, however, is deemed difficult because many companies recognize the importance of their proprietary knowledge and are not willing to share it freely. Recognizing this weakness, many countries have promoted the development of regional clusters where firms can co-develop their competences and competitive advantage against the world's best competitors by sharing knowledge, resources, and innovative capabilities. Other than industrial clusters, trust is also considered an important factor in knowledge management study. Trust reduces the need to monitor others' behaviors, formalize procedures, and it lowers transaction costs. At the macro level, trust can enhance organizations' core competencies and sustain their competitive advantages through co-evolution. This may occur through the development of group collaborations, cooperative relationships, and networks. The study adopted a field survey research method and used multiple regressions as the data analysis technique. The dependent variable …
Date: May 2008
Creator: Niu, Kuei-Hsien
System: The UNT Digital Library
Organizational factors contributing to an effective information technology intelligence system. (open access)

Organizational factors contributing to an effective information technology intelligence system.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the organizational factors that contribute to effective emerging information technology intelligence processes and products. Emerging information technology is defined as a technology which is little commercialized and is currently adopted by not more than twenty percent of the companies within a given industry. By definition, information technology intelligence is a subdivision of competitive intelligence and business intelligence. I discovered evidence that the information technology intelligence process includes assessment of information technology intelligence needs of consumers, collection of data from internal and external sources, analysis of the collected data and distribution of the analyzed data to the consumers. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the existence of all the variables in the proposed research model. I found empirical evidence that the final technology intelligence product contributes to better decisions made by consumers, their better environmental scanning, and more funding to information technology departments in organizations from different industries and of different sizes.
Date: December 2008
Creator: Taskov, Konstantin
System: The UNT Digital Library
Accident versus Essence:  Investigating the Relationship Among Information Systems Development and Requirements Capabilities and Perceptions of Enterprise Architecture (open access)

Accident versus Essence: Investigating the Relationship Among Information Systems Development and Requirements Capabilities and Perceptions of Enterprise Architecture

Information systems (IS) are indelibly linked to the global economy and are indispensable to society and organizations. Despite the decisive function of IS in organizations today, IS development problems continue to plague organizations. The failure to get the system requirements right is considered to be one of the primary, if not the most significant, reasons for this high IS failure rate. Getting requirements right is most notably identified with Frederick Brooks' contention that requirements are the essence of what IT professionals do, all the rest being accidents or risk management. However, enterprise architecture (EA) may also provide the discipline to bridge the gap between effective requirements, organizational objectives, and the actual IS implementations. The intent of this research is to examine the relationship between IS development capabilities and requirements analysis and design capabilities within the context of enterprise architecture. To accomplish this, a survey of IT professionals within the Society for Information Management (SIM) was conducted. Results indicate support for the hypothesized relationship between IS development and requirements capabilities. The hypothesized relationships with the organizational demographics were not supported nor was the hypothesized positive relationship between requirements capabilities and EA perceptions. However, the nature of the relationship of requirements and …
Date: August 2009
Creator: Salmans, Brian R.
System: The UNT Digital Library