Partner Noncooperation and Relationship Recuperation in Buyer-Supplier Relationships: A Longitudinal Examination

Facing partner noncooperation, how would channel members respond to such negative incidents and repair relationships? Building on attribution theory and channel governance theories, we examine strategies to cope with negative incidents in interfirm arrangements and interorganizational trust repair. We identity three types of noncooperative incident (NCI) attritions an NCI-receiving party makes, namely opportunism attrition, joint-responsibility attrition, and environmental factor attrition, and view them as primary determinants of recuperative strategies (i.e., tolerance, formalization, and socialization). First, we propose that when parties make opportunism attributions and joint-responsibility attritions, they are more likely to take proactive recuperative strategies, such as formalization and socialization; when parties consider environmental factors as the primary cause of the NCI, they tend to adopt passive responses, such as tolerance. Second, we propose that partner dependence plays a significant role in moderating the NCI attrition – recuperative strategy relationship. For example, if a buyer heavily depends on the supplier, the buyer is more likely to tolerate some degree of opportunism as switching to other suppliers incur significant costs. In such condition, the buyer tends to use proactive recuperative strategies and remain loyal within business relationships. Third, this project investigates the effects of recuperative strategies on post-act partnership performance. We propose that formalization and tolerance lead to calculative trust, whereas socialization helps to repair identification trust. In addition, we propose that formalization and socialization efforts prevent the reoccurrence of NCIs. We empirically test our propositions using a longitudinal design. The results of this project carry important theoretical managerial implications for interfirm cooperation and partnership recuperation.