Antecedents of buyer opportunistic behavior in outsourcing relationships

Abstract

Parties acting opportunistically are a major concern in many buyer-supplier relationships, especially in strategic outsourcing arrangements. The extant literature has focused mainly on opportunistic behavior of suppliers and the safeguards that buyers need to put in place to protect their interests. Buyers can also act opportunistically; however, this side of the dyadic relationship has not received adequate attention and remains an under researched area. We address this imbalance by establishing the antecedents of buyer opportunism and strategies to manage this. Based on the transaction cost economics theory, we tested a model consisting of three factors that could give rise to buyer opport..