Journal article
Relational contracting and the myth of trust: Control in a co-opetitive setting
Jennifer Grafton, Julia Mundy
MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | Published : 2017
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the role of formal and relational contracts in managing alliance risks that arise in co-opetitive collaborations. We undertake a case study of a co-opetitive sales alliance within the independent publishing sector, incorporating data from all firms to the alliance. We provide empirical evidence of the relational risks of misappropriation and opportunism as manifest in both vertical (buyer-supplier) and horizontal activities within the alliance and identify a further relational risk relating to concerns of introducing homogeneity into the product offerings of firms. We also examine the nature of compliance and regulatory risk, which is salient in this setting giv..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the generous time contributions and co-operation of the firms whose data inform this study. Financial support for this study was provided by the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, and the General Charitable Trust of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in the United Kingdom. We thank Anne Lillis, Shannon Anderson, and Henri Dekker for comments on earlier versions of this paper and acknowledge comments offered by seminar participants at the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology, Sydney, La Trobe University and the midyear management accounting section meeting of the AAA.