거래 파트너 간 유연성이 결속, 그리고 재무적 성과에 미치는 영향 - 영향전략의 선행변수모형

On Influence Strategies, Flexibility, and Commitment in Industrial Relationships

&nbsp;&nbsp;Exchange between suppliers and their customers on business markets increasingly take place in the form of long-term relationships. These relationships are governed through legal contracts or informal agreements. But many scholars have criticized the inadequacies of legal contracts as mechanisms for governing exchange, especially in the face of uncertainty. Under environmental uncertainty, actors are bounded in their rationality and find it impossible to contemplate all possible future contingencies.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In this case, the actor relies upon his partner’s flexibility. Flexibility provides a general frame of reference, order, and standards against which to guide and assess appropriate behavior in uncertain and ambiguous situations. In such situations flexibility motivates performance through focusing attention on the shared values of the partners to safeguard and rely on peer pressure and social sanctions to mitigate the risk of shirking and opportunistic expropriation. Many scholars have found this flexibility can arise resulting in commitment.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;However, flexibility requires a history of interaction and reinforcement for its development, and in the absence of a solid foundation this interaction can just as easily head toward conflict, suspicion, and self-interest as it can to cooperation, trust, and mutuality. This interaction may be influence strategies that are the means of communication used by a firm’s personnel in applying the firm&quot;s power.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus, this paper attempts to verify a model in which a firm’s influence strategies serve as antecedents for supplier flexibility and commitment. To this end, empirical data provided by suppliers of Samsung Electronics and NOKIA will be analyzed The conclusions of this research will be (a) the main effect of influence strategies on supplier flexibility and commitment, and (b) the moderating effects of environmental uncertainty and dependence on the interfirm influence process.