Governance Mechanisms and Business Ecosystem Coordination: The Roles of Opportunistic Behavior and Perceived Performance Risk

Abstract

The uncertainty of the market environment and the increasing levels of competition as result of globalisation encourage companies to change from stand-alone to collaborative or interconnected network economy in order to gain resilience and agility. This trend has resulted in the emergence of new organisational philosophies that provide an enabling environment that ensures business collaboration. A typical example is a concept known as Business Ecosystem (BE) introduced by Moore which used biological ecosystem metaphor to explain business environments. Since there are different stakeholders with varied interests, there is the need for an introduction of governance mechanisms that regulate stakeholder activities. The current study therefore seeks to examine the effect of governance mechanisms on BE coordination. The study also assesedthe moderating and mediating roles of perceived performance risk and opportunistic behaviour respectively. The data analysis was done using the 173 responses from the institutions from the BE of pharmaceutical Company X in Ghana. The data analysis was run using structural equation modelling (SEM) and both the Amos (v.23) and SPSS (v.23) software packages were used. The results revealed that the two governance mechanisms have positive and significant influence on BE coordination. Opportunistic behaviour only partially mediated the relationship between relational governance and BE coordination. The relationship between opportunistic behaviour and coordination was moderated by perceived performance risk. Based on the results, we propose some recommendations for management to enhance their contact persons performance. Keywords: Business Ecosystem, Relational Governance, Contractual Governance, Perceived Performance Risk, Opportunistic Behavior. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-11-03 Publication date: June 30 th 2022