Uncertainty, Bounded Rationality and Opportunistic Behavior: A Study in Brazilian Industry.
Keywords:
transaction costs, uncertainty, bounded rationality, specificity and opportunistic behaviorAbstract
The purpose of this study was to understand the opportunistic behavior of the concepts from uncertainty, bounded rationality and asset specificity. A theoretical model was proposed and tested where the specificity was operationalized according to the dedicated, physical and human assets following Smittlein and Anderson (1984), Carson, Madhok and Wu (2006) and Skarmeas, Schleger and Kats (2002), anchored in the Transaction Cost Theory (TCT). The opportunistic behavior was operationalized as the indicators proposed by Carson, Madhok and Wu (2006). The bounded rationality has been studied from the perspective of Simon (1957, 1980) and the operationalization of the construct uncertainty in line with Knight (1921; 2002), Duncan (1972), Gordon Narayanan (1984), Milliken (1987, 1990). The data was collected from 111 managers in the manufacturing industry in Brazil selected on the basis of Industrial Federation of the São Paulo and submitted to Structural Equation Modeling. The results showed that bounded rationality and asset specificity positively influence the opportunistic behavior of economic agents, confirming the arguments of the theory of transaction costs, meaning that as greater the specificity of the assets less are the investment possibilities of reuse, making continuity valuable relationship and potential target of opportunistic. The results confirmed the multidimensionality of the construct uncertainty, too, reinforcing the theoretical arguments from the perspective of Uncertainty Information. This finding, together Simon (1957, 1980) definitions, enabled the operationalization of the construct bounded rationality from the uncertainty effect and response uncertainty, and the realization of the importance of this premise to explain the existence of transaction costs. In this sense the results allows a range of possibilities and contributes significantly to the advancement of empirical studies in the field of TCT.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Once the papers have been approved, the authors will assign their copyrights to this Journal. The Copyright Assignment Conditions include:
1. The Mackenzie Administration Journal holds the rights to all the papers published therein through assignment of copyright.
2. The author retains moral rights to the paper, including the right to identify the author whenever the article is published.
3. As of July 1, 2015 RAM adopted the CC-BY license standard (Creative Commons– BY). Authors are allowed to copy, distribute, display, transmit and adapt articles. Authors must attribute to RAM explicitly and clearly an article’s original publication (with reference to the journal’s name, edition, year and pages in which the article was originally published), yet without suggesting that RAM endorses the author or its use of the article. Contents are released by means of the CC-BY license to fully inter-operate with a variety of different systems and services, including for commercial purposes. In case of an article’s reuse or distribution, authors must make the article’s licensing terms clear to third parties. CC-BY criteria follow open access policies by major OA (Open Access) publishers and journals, such as PLoS, eLife, Biomed Central and Hindawi, among others.
4. When formally requested by the author, this Journal may allow the paper to be published as a chapter or part of a book. The only requirement is that prior publication in this Journal (Journal name, issue, year and pages) must be clearly and explicitly shown as a reference.
