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PublicationUnleashing B2B Data Sharing: Conditions for Trust and Opportunism Promoting Data Exchange( 2023)
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PublicationUNLEASHING DATA ENTREPRENEURSHIP: CONDITIONS FOR OPPORTUNISM AND TRUST PROMOTING BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS DATA SHARING BETWEEN CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSPrinciple Topic: The potential benefits of business-to-business (B2B) data sharing for fostering innovation in organizations have been widely recognized. However, despite this recognition, many companies remain hesitant to share data. Existing B2B data-sharing contracts often suffer from incomplete terms and associated risks, including privacy violations, commercial sensitivity breaches, and security threats. These risks invite opportunistic behavior, thereby impeding the innovation potential of B2B data sharing. To address this challenge, our study examines the link between different types of opportunism (active vs. passive and endogenous vs. exogenous) and the corresponding willingness of senior managers to engage in B2B data sharing. Method: We empirically examine our predictions by conducting a conjoint experiment that requires respondents to make decisions based on two different opportunism types from which the underlying structure of their decisions can be decomposed. For our experiment, 121 Thai managers indicate their likelihood to share B2B data in four different opportunism scenarios, whereby we differentiate active from passive and endogenous from exogenous opportunism. We further collect respondents’ business unit data and demographics. Results and Implications: Based on the analysis of 484 data-sharing decisions, we infer that active (as opposed to passive) opportunistic behavior is associated with a reduced likelihood to share B2B data, while endogenous (as opposed to exogenous) opportunism is associated with an increased likelihood to share data. These findings afford three contributions to the existing literature. First, we introduce the personal preference in the form of a choice between two competing understandings of opportunism, i.e., as endogenous or exogenous, and then empirically examine how the preference for either of the two understandings relates to the likelihood of B2B data sharing. Second, our data from Southeast Asia support the perspective that originated with data from North America and advocate for an endogenous interpretation of opportunism, as opposed to the traditional exogenous, i.e., ambiguous and unattributable, view espoused by transaction cost economics. Our forced choice between endogenous and exogenous opportunism suggests that senior managers’ engagement in B2B data sharing increases when they know the level of opportunism potential in an exchange relationship. Third, the empirical substantiation of the relationship between active-passive and endogenous-exogenous sub-constructs of opportunism and the likelihood of B2B data sharing calls for their separate collection and modeling. Otherwise, distinct effects might overlap and cancel each other out in the worst case. Overall, our study demonstrates that scholars need to consider the various sub-constructs of opportunism to understand their separate impacts on exchange relationships.
