Contract specificity and its performance outcomes

Abstract

Governance theories, such as transaction cost economics, argue that systematic deviations from an attribute–governance alignment should influence performance. This article investigates the performance implications of contract specificity for the procurement of information technology products. The authors argue that parties choose a level of contract specificity that economizes on both the ex ante contracting costs and the ex post transaction costs and that deviations between the observed and the predicted levels of contract specificity are an important determinant of these transaction costs. The authors test the hypotheses using a comprehensive archival data set of information technology transactions and employ a two-step estimation procedure. First, they estimate the “predicted” level of contract specificity, which accounts for key transactional attributes. Second, they study the consequences of deviating from this predicted level of contractual specificity. The results provide the first explicit demonstration of the trade-off between ex ante contracting costs and ex post transaction problems and suggest that parties need to economize jointly on these costs when choosing the governance form.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.74.2.105
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Marketing & Strategy
Uncontrolled Keywords: Business and International Management,Marketing,Economics and Econometrics
Publication ISSN: 1547-7185
Last Modified: 21 Mar 2024 08:10
Date Deposited: 11 Mar 2019 18:16
Full Text Link: http://www.jour ... 9/jmkg.74.2.105
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2010-03
Authors: Mooi, Erik (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3613-1179)
Ghosh, Mrinal

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