Supply Chain Opportunism and the Interorganizational System Adoption Decision

In certain interorganizational system (IOS) adoptions, IOS initiators have incentives to exploit the full benefit to their trading partners once the partners implement the IOS. This is termed ex post opportunistic behavior on the part of the initiator. The anticipated ex post opportunistic behavior of the initiator can deter the trading partner’s ex ante IOS adoption decision, which prevents the full economic benefit from being realized. We posit that ex post opportunistic behavior will vary with the relative dependency that exists between the initiator (buyer) and follower (supplier). Using resource dependence theory (RDT), we identify the relative dependence spectrum as follows: independency, buyer power, supplier power and interdependency. We believe that this new model contributes to the IS literature because understanding of the incentive problems helps firms to design governance mechanisms to circumvent the IOS adoptio