亲社会行为视角下的经销商揭发:多层次驱动因素与作用结果

A Pro-social Perspective on Retailer Whistle-blowing:Multi-level Antecedents and Effects

经销商之间的揭发有助于供应商发现渠道中的错误行为,维护渠道秩序。为了管理渠道运行,供应商需要深入理解经销商揭发对渠道关系的影响及经销商何时会采取揭发行为。根据亲社会行为理论,本文建构了经销商揭发的驱动因素及其对渠道关系影响的概念模型。实证研究表明,经销商的“人格特征”(责任感)和“认知因素”(专用资产投入、相互依赖和相对依赖)对其揭发具有驱动作用。经销商揭发能够提升渠道关系绩效,但受到供应商监督的负向调节影响。本文还探讨了研究发现的理论价值和对企业渠道管理实践的参考意义。

Channel members often engage in misconduct(illegal,non-compliant,or unethical behaviors)for self-interests.These wrongdoings have negative impacts on channel members and even on the channel system as a whole.As channel managers,many suppliers have realized the importance of curbing these wrongdoings.For example,some studies have discussed how suppliers can reduce distributor misconduct through ex ante contracts and ex post monitoring,and by developing interpersonal relationships with boundary personals.Nonetheless,it is often difficult for suppliers to fully monitor distributors’behaviors,especially those that deliberately avoid supplier monitoring.It is easier for distributors to detect each other’s wrongdoings than for suppliers because of the proximity of their market activities and their greater attention to each other’s actions due to market competition.In channel management practice,especially in channel systems with intensive distribution strategies,whistle-blowing between distributors is widespread.The current research on whistle-blowing has focused on organizational behavior,specifically,the employee whistle-blowing within organizations.In the field of marketing research,there is only one conceptual paper that examines corporate-level whistle-blowing in the context of marketing channel,and there is no empirical evidence on the antecedents and outcomes of channel whistle-blowing.On this basis,this paper takes a pro-social behavioral perspective and focuses on distributor whistle-blowing in the supplier-distributor group,proposing and empirically testing the following two questions.First,channel whistle-blowing is not the duty of distributors and it may even trigger retaliation.Then under what circumstances would a distributor take a channel whistle-blowing?Eisenberg suggests that pro-social behavior is influenced by the personality and cognitive processes of the actor.This paper argues that channel whistle-blowing is a form of pro-social behavior and explores the impact of distributors’personality traits and cognitive processes on their whistle-blowing behavior based on Eisenberg’s pro-social behavior model.Second,what impact will whistle-blowing bring on the outcome of channel operations?What are the contextual factors that influence this impact?As a form of pro-social behavior,whistle-blowing is beneficial for the channel manager or channel system,but when the channel manager accepts the goodwill of the whistle-blower,he/she may also feel challenged by the behavior in terms of management capabilities and managerial authority.Thus,this paper examines the boundary conditions for the impact of distributor whistle-blowing on channel relationships from this perspective.The expected theoretical contributions of this paper are threefold.First,from the perspective of pro-social behavior theory,the paper examines the antecedents of firm-level whistle-blowing in marketing channels,namely,firm’s personality traits(responsibility)and cognitive factors(transaction-specific investment,mutual dependence and relative dependence),which expands the research on channel behavior and governance.Second,the paper investigates the impact of distributor whistle-blowing on channel relationships and its boundary conditions,depicting a more complete picture for understanding whistle-blowing behavior.Third,the application of the concept of whistle-blowing to inter-organizational relationships enriches the study of whistle-blowing in the field of organizational behavior.