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Achrol, R. S. and G. T. Gundlach (1999). 'Legal and social safeguards against opportunism in exchange'. Journal of Retailing 75(1): 107.
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The age-old mechanism of protecting against opportunism is the legal contract. Various literatures have attacked the inadequacies of contract in the context of complex, modern day exchange relationships. Some theories have argued for the superiority of social mechanisms of control, while others have been skeptical toward their use. A study proposes that both legal contracts and social safeguards are useful means of mitigating opportunism. However, they rarely occur in isolation in modern exchanges, and the interesting questions about their governance properties have to do with their interaction effects. The study employs a behavioral simulation to empirically examine the individual and combined effects of contract and relational norm safeguards against opportunism directly in the context of asymmetric commitments by exchange parties.