1#Opportunism, Conflict and Perceived Unfairness
Question #1
In the paper written by Samaha, Palmatier & Dant (2011) would you necessarily consider conflict,
opportunism, and perceived unfairness as avoidable in logistics management? Also how do you
think these factors affect relational behaviors?
Answer
Question #2
As you can all see from the article written by Samaha et.al. (2011) there are several ideas that
can be conceptualized and tested. Do you think contract utilization necessarily harms cooperation
and flexibility in logistics management? What does Samaha et.al. (2011) think about this?
Answer
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Opportunism, perceived unfairness, and conflict can be avoided situations in
logistics management because they affect both cooperation and flexibility. I consider
opportunism, conflict and perceived unfairness as avoidable circumstances in logistics
management (Samaha, Palmatier, and Dant 2011). Logistics managers must effectively
understand how relationships can be damaged to have strategies to build and preserve strong
distribution channels. Managers should ensure the three factors are kept low because perceived
unfairness effects directly damage relationships and aggravate the negative impacts of
opportunism and conflict. This weakens the merits of applying contracts in managing relational
behaviors.
The direct effects of relationship-destroying issues on channel outcomes are
manifested in the presence of conflict, opportunism, and perceived unfairness. Perceived
unfairness has an immediate impact on relational behaviors such as affecting flexibility and
cooperation. These effects consequently affect overall performance. According to Samaha,
Palmatier and Dant (2011), perceived unfairness moderates the adverse impacts of both
opportunism and conflict on relational behaviors. However, their empirical study showed that
opportunism and conflict cause more damage to channel relationship when they accompany
perceptions of unfairness. Therefore, it is essential to keep the low perception of unfairness to
have small or insignificant effects on relational behaviors from conflict and opportunism. Also,
conflict pervades business activities, which affect personal performance and goal attainment. For
instance, conflict creates an environment of disagreement, incompatibility, and dissonance
within an organization. Therefore, managers should proactively work to resolve issues
concerning unfairness before working on opportunism and conflict because of their leveraging
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impacts. Managers should adopt strategies such as developing training programs and specific
education, which will stress the importance of fairness. It is essential to identify types of
situations within relational behaviors that most likely activate perceptions of unfairness and
establish strategies to prevent them because they will adversely affect goal attainment and
overall organizational performance (Griffith, Hoppner, Lee & Schoenherr, 2017).
2# Contract Utilization, and Cooperation/Flexibility
I believe that “contract utilization does not necessarily harm cooperation and
flexibility logistics management directly.” This is because contract utilization according to
Samaha, Palmatier, and Dant (2011) is a double-edged sword in solving the impacts of perceived
unfairness, opportunism and conflict. I believe that contract utilization cannot harm logistics
management. Managers must adopt the right channels for communication and exchanges to
ensure cooperation and flexibility. Managers must adequately ensure that effects of unfairness
perceptions, conflict and opportunism are kept low to encourage goal attainment and improved
organizational performance. Managers must effectively manage all exchanges in contractual
agreement as well as enforcing a contract to manage relational behaviors. Therefore, it is
essential to keep a high level of contract utilization by resorting to using contracts to ensure that
all parties meet their obligations. This enhances cooperation and flexibility within an
organization, which improves overall performance.
According to Samaha, Palmatier, and Dant (2011), contract utilization is a double-
edged-sword scenario. The analysis of post hoc in that contract utilization has net adverse or net
adverse effects depending on the present perceived unfairness levels, comparative to the
opportunism and conflict levels. Thus, managers should enhance contract utilization when
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opportunism and conflict are high to suppressive impacts and make the strategy more desirable.
Besides, companies should not apply a contract to deal with a single adverse effect, but should
instead put into consideration all joint implications of contract utilization on various harmful
behaviors. Other studies suggest that managers should maintain active contracts to enhance
supplier performance individually and in combination. Therefore, according to Samaha,
Palmatier, and Dant (2011), relationship-destroying issues have effects on performance that may
occur due to undermining trust over time and degrade flexibility or cooperation directly. Contract
utilization helps a manager to maintain collaboration and flexibility high even under potential
adverse impacts of opportunism and conflict.
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References
Griffith, D. A., Hoppner, J. J., Lee, H. S., & Schoenherr, T. (2017). The influence of the structure
of interdependence on the response to inequity in buyer–supplier relationships. Journal of
Marketing Research, 54(1), 124-137.
Samaha, S. A., Palmatier, R. W., & Dant, R. P. (2011). Poisoning relationships: Perceived
unfairness in channels of distribution. Journal of Marketing, 75(3), 99-117.
