Antecedents and Consequences of Relational Governance in the Agribusiness Supply Chain

Abstract

Interorganizational relationships have emerged as a strategy to increase the mutual gains of companies in the supply chain. This issue is examined in Agribusiness. The objective is to understand the influence of Information Technology and Interorganizational Trust on Relational Governance and its influence on the results of members of the customer-supplier dyad. A survey was carried out applied to companies associated with SIMERS, an agricultural machinery industries association. Responses from 47 cases were analyzed. Factor analyzes results have suggested examining the variables Flexibility and Informal Cooperation Mechanisms to measure Relational Governance as well as the variables Relational Performance, Cost of Conflict and Difficulty of Partnership to examine the consequences of Relational Governance. The complementary structural analyze shows that only Interorganizational Trust has a positive effect on Cooperation, differently of what happen with Flexibility, which also receives a positive and significant effect from the Integration of Information Technology.  It also presents the following significants consequences of Relational Governance: Flexibility positively on Performance, Flexibility negatively on Partnership Difficulty, Cooperation positively on Performance and on the Cost of Conflict and Cooperation negatively on Partnership Difficulty. Therefore, this article indicates potential ways to reduce transaction costs and provide superior relational performance for customer-supplier dyad.