治理歧视策略与企业价值获取的关系:B2B情境下的实证研究

Relationship between Governance Discrimination Strategy and Firms’Value Appropriation:Empirical Re-search in B2B Contexts

本文以实证数据为基础,研究了卖方企业采用的合同治理歧视策略和关系治理歧视策略如何通过买方信任和买方机会主义影响卖方的价值获取。对中国230对B2B企业买卖双方的匹配调查数据分析表明,卖方采用合同治理歧视策略会产生更高水平的买方机会主义行为,从而在卖方与买方的关系中损害卖方的价值获取能力。相反,卖方使用关系治理歧视策略可以帮助建立买方对卖方的信任,同时抑制买方的机会主义,最终提高卖方的价值获取。此外,合同治理歧视策略和关系治理歧视策略的交互项正向影响买方信任,负向影响买方机会主义。本研究采用网络视角,对价值获取和企业间治理机制的理论发展做出了贡献,也为B2B企业如何利用治理歧视策略从与买方的关系中获取更多利益提供了深刻的启示。

The limited investigations into value appropriation are mostly conducted in the contexts of co-innovation,cooperative innovation,coopetition,strategic alliance and R&D outsourcing,with a few discussions on the value appropriation mechanism in B2B buyer-seller relationships.Extant literature mainly explores antecedents of value appropriation from focal firm specific variables,partner firm specific variables,and inter-firm relationship variables,but rarely analyzes value appropriation from the perspective of business networks in an empirical way.Previous studies extensively discuss the effectiveness of contractual governance and relational governance in a dyadic relationship.Topics about the practice that a firm implements different degrees of governance(i.e.governance discrimination strategies)to multiple partners and the interaction between different governance discrimination strategies have not received adequate attention.In order to bridge the research gaps in extant literature,this paper,based on empirical data,investigates how contractual and relational governance discrimination strategies used by supplier firm impact its value appropriation via the buyer firm’s opportunism and trust.By means of traditional psychometric methods,we developed a paired questionnaire for the buyer-supplier relationship based on literature reading and field interviews.The analysis of survey data from 230 matched buyer-seller dyads of Chinese B2B firms indicates that seller’s’application of contractual governance discrimination strategy will generate higher level of buyers’opportunistic behavior,thus harming sellers’capability of value appropriation from their relationship with buyers.By contrast,the seller’s use of relational governance discrimination strategy can help to build up the buyer’s trust towards the seller and at the same time curb the buyer’s opportunism,which will finally improve the seller’s value appropriation.In addition,interaction of contractual and relational governance discrimination strategies positively impacts the buyer’s trust and negatively impacts the buyer’s opportunism.This paper makes four significant contributions to theory development of value appropriation and inter-firm governance mechanism by adopting a network view.Firstly,it explores the determinants of value appropriation from the perspective of inter-firm governance,thus expanding value appropriation research.Secondly,it extends the discussions of the buyer-supplier dual relationship from the perspective of the overall network,and explores the impact of governance discriminations on value appropriation from the perspective of business networks for the first time.This helps firms better understand how to effectively govern inter-firm relationships and finally achieve optimal value appropriation.Thirdly,it finds that governance discrimination strategies play an important role in value appropriation in the dual buyer-supplier relationship,and both perception(trust)and behavior(opportunism)of partners play an important mediating role in the relationship between governance mechanisms and value appropriation.Fourthly,this paper expands discussions on the relationship between contractual governance and relational governance in traditional literature to the context of governance discrimination strategies,and reveals that both the two governance discrimination strategies have significant interaction effects on business performance.This paper provides the following insightful implications for B2B firms on capturing more benefits from the relationship with buyers by utilizing governance discrimination strategies.Firstly,B2B managers should adopt a holistic network view when designing the governance mechanisms of firms’relationship with buyers and the value appropriation strategies’.Secondly,firms can use the contract as a mandatory tool to restrain partners’opportunistic behavior,and at the same time try to reduce the buyer’s perception that supplier uses more stringent contractual governance than other buyers.Thirdly,sellers can use relational discrimination strategy skillfully and employ relational governance tools to a greater extent.Fourthly,two governance discrimination strategies should be integrated in practice.