Goal Incongruence Research Articles

How incentive alignment along the supply chain fosters incremental innovation: evidence from defence performance-based contracts

PurposeTo investigate how providers of product-service bundles design and manage their contracts with upstream suppliers to incentivise incremental innovation for the benefit of their downstream customers, who contract the provider based on performance.Design/methodology/approachAn embedded multiple-case study was conducted to examine elements of a European jet fighter’s manufacturing and after-sales supply chain. The embedded cases concern provider contracts with first-tier suppliers of product and service offerings. Data collection involved 21 semi-structured interviews, documents and other secondary data sources. Data analysis was informed by agency theory to assess the effectiveness of contract design and management in delivering incremental innovation and to identify related contracting strategies.FindingsWe identify four strategies for fostering incremental innovation in contracts between providers and their first-tier suppliers. These include two contract design strategies, i.e. reducing goal incongruence and addressing information asymmetry; and two contract management strategies, i.e. reducing outcome uncertainty and promoting inter-firm integration between providers and sub-suppliers.Practical implicationsThe research offers managerial guidelines regarding how providers can design and manage their tier-one supplier contracts to achieve incremental innovation. These include encouraging early supplier involvement, using focussed KPIs in contracts, and managing product and service-offering suppliers differently.Originality/valueThe research shows the contingent effect during contract design and management of a sub-supplier’s product vs. service offering, which, in turn, impacts incremental innovation. We also find that using focussed key performance indicators in sub-supplier contracts can be effective in improving product and service quality.

Effectiveness of Performance Appraisal in Multinational Companies

A strategic HRM method called international performance appraisal (IPA) helps multinationalcorporations (MNCs) to regularly assess and enhance corporate, subsidiary, and individual performance inrelation to well-defined, predetermined goals. An incentive structure established by an effective IPA canguarantee that foreign workers and foreign subsidiaries are operating in the best interests of the parent firm.Information asymmetry and goal incongruence between the parent firm and its subsidiaries are theprimary causes of IPA's complexity. MNCs can select from a variety of IPA approaches, and theseapproaches are influenced by a host of firm-specific and host-contextual factors. Even though IPAs arewidely acknowledged to be important, most MNCs have not handled IPAs well.

Governing hybrid organisations: Lessons from the provision of local sports facility services in 2020s Finland

AbstractThe Finnish welfare society is based on strong public and civic sectors with an emerging private sector. In the context of sports, the public sector's statutory task has been to provide opportunities and facilities for citizens, whereas the civic sector has been responsible for organising activities. However, since the 1990s, economic recessions, new public management doctrines, and other societal changes have mixed this institutionalised setting and increased hybridity in the provision of public services. This study examines how hybridity is manifested and governed in the provision of local sports facility services in contemporary Finland through a literature review and a multiple case study focusing on three sports facility construction projects. The projects had partners from all societal sectors and, organisationally, assumed different forms: privately owned, sports clubs co‐owned, and municipally owned enterprises. The case data consist of thematic interviews and project documentation and are analysed with theory‐driven content analysis. The study deepens understanding of the mixed ownership structures, various funding arrangements, control mechanisms, and management of goal incongruency found in hybrid facility‐provider organisations. Additionally, it describes changing roles and challenges that municipalities face in hybrid settings and develops recommendations for future research on hybridity and sports policy.Points for practitioners Note that the capacity to steer the operations of hybrids in municipal services provision can be obtained in various ways which do not entail formal ownership. Deepen your understanding of the goals and commitment incentives of the different stakeholders planned to be involved in the hybrid project. Consider jointly written formal contracts as tools for managing goal ambiguity and incongruence and for creating trust in the hybrid arrangement. Examine comprehensively the resourcing of the facility‐provider organisation in the operational phase of the facility when evaluating the funding arrangements and public value creation of hybrid facility projects. Prepare to become a practitioner and the object subjected to more diverse forms of control when committing to hybrid arrangements with various stakeholders.

“If only we'd known”: Theory of supply failure under two‐sided information asymmetry

AbstractSupply failures are persistent and costly in contemporary supply chains. Viewed through the lens of agency theory, such failures are potentially caused by hidden actions of the supplier under information asymmetry and goal incongruence in the buyer–supplier relationship (as principal–agent). However, by reversing the direction of information asymmetry, an alternative cause arises: hidden expectations, where the supplier has good intentions but incomplete information regarding the buyer's true preferences and specifications. Further, following a failure, the buyer forms a causal attribution and takes subsequent action. Yet these attributions suffer from cognitive biases potentially causing buyers to misattribute supply failures, leading to costly conflict and even relationship termination. Combining agency and attribution theories, this article develops a theoretical framework to explain antecedents to a buyer's attribution process under conditions of two‐sided asymmetric information. It discusses the harmful relationship effects of misattribution. The framework can assist in identifying and minimizing cognitive biases causing misattribution, hence avoiding the unintentional deterioration of relationships that often follow a supply failure. A research agenda to examine hidden expectations and misattribution is also provided.

Perspectives Regarding Engagement in Physical Activity in Women: Traditional Gender Role-Based Themes.

There has not been a significant improvement in cardiovascular disease (CVD) statistics among women; 44.4% of women older than 20 years have a diagnoses of CVD. Only 24.3% of adults meet physical activity (PA) guidelines, women have significantly lower levels of PA significantly lower levels than men. There is a call to action from the American Heart Association to delineate reasons for related genderized, socially determined factors. The purpose of this study was to use the individual and family self-management theory to explore and describe interacting sociodemographic, family, cultural, health/access-related, and personal factors contributing to PA engagement in women living in areas of reduced socioeconomic resources. This study used a community-engaged, qualitative descriptive focus group design to explore PA engagement in women between 18 and 64 years old living in an area of reduced socioeconomic resources and high racial and ethnic diversity. Context-related factors included cost/access, transportation, safety, and setting and interacted with family structure and functioning. Process-level factors affecting PA engagement included outcome expectancy, goal incongruence, lack of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and provider support/collaboration. Facilitators included family/friend social support. The current community-engaged study reveals socially constructed gender role elements related to family dynamics, self-perception, and self-regulation that potentially impact engagement in self-management behavior. Programs to increase awareness and self-management of CVD in women exist, but there is a lack of direct effects, speaking to unknown factors. Given perpetually high rates of CVD, low levels of PA, and declining knowledge levels among women, further investigation is imperative.

Modelling the Utilization of Digital Technology in Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic Through an Expert-Based Analytic Tool

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has threatened the capability of academic institutions to continuously deliver quality education despite the worldwide lockdown implemented to curb the transmission of the dreaded disease. As a result, institutions are forced to take advantage of supplementary digital technology to support online learning. Recognizing that an expert-based approach is deemed necessary to carefully execute the decision-making process of utilizing digital technology, this paper provides a new perspective of assessing the constructs of digital technology utilization with the use of fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). Among the constructs considered, burnout (BO), technostress (TS), goal incongruence (GI), and reflexivity (RE) are found to be effects of other causal constructs. These findings offer crucial insights into the evolving literature of COVID-19 on education, particularly on informing the design of initiatives and measures to support the use of digital technologies as may be necessary.

The Distortion of Public–Private Partnerships in China: An Institutional Perspective of Central–Local Government Relations

How to explain the distortion of public–private partnerships (PPPs) is underexplored. Drawing on principal–agent theory, this article proposes an institutional incentive-driven framework. Based on a case study of PPPs in China, this article finds that central–local government relationships play a crucial role in shaping PPP performance. Goal incongruence and information asymmetry lead to two types of distortion. First, PPPs become a political task for local governments to respond to higher-level governments’ needs. Second, PPPs serve as financing tools to create political achievements. These opportunistic behaviors violate the goals of the central government’s PPP policy and increase government debt risks.

R&D innovation under uncertainty: a framework for empirical investigation of knowledge complementarity and goal congruence

PurposeThis study aims to introduce a new prescriptive model to aid both managers and researchers in partner selection for innovation-orientated collaboration. This framework demonstrates how prospective partner firms’ complementing bodies of knowledge and goal alignment interact to affect the success of a collaboration.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use geometric modeling to represent the interrelationships among knowledge similarity/dissimilarity, goal congruence, knowledge complementarity (KC) and innovation in alliance formation. Using this model as a framework, the authors derive relationships among predictors of innovation success and determine how they affect the nature of partnerships under varying conditions of KC.FindingsThis research shows how innovation success is strongly determined by partner selection. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of KC and partner goals on three aspects of a potential research and development (R&D) alliance – the potential level of innovation outcome for the alliance, the boundaries of knowledge sharing and limitations arising from knowledge and goal incongruence and the nature of cooperation.Originality/valueAlthough there is broad empirical support that innovation success is influenced by the similarity of R&D partners’ knowledge, further research is still needed to model the relationship more precisely between partner KC and goal alignment. The authors address this gap by developing a model that is both prescriptive and predictive of how innovation success can be achieved in the context of disparate but complementing knowledge and goal sets. The authors conclude with practical implications for practice and future research directions.

Personality self-representation change in circumstances of “goal — affordance” incongruity and situational opportunities

The purpose of the current work was to study the influence of incongruence of an individual’s goals and situational affordances on the self-representation in everyday situations. In the course of the study, participants (N = 62) first gave a self-assessment of their personality traits, after which they defined relevant goals in six pairs of situational vignettes on the SAAP scale, then selected adjectives from the list describing their state in situations of congruency (CS) and non-congruency (NCS) with their primary goals. Finally, the valence of self-representation in CS and NCS was determined. The results of the study showed that in all six pairs of compared situations there were changes in goals, from complete or partial replacement of goals to important changes in their significance for the respondents. Multiple regression analysis allowed us to conclude that situational determinants as explanatory variables can better explain the manifestations of agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness and openness in the NCS, compared to stable traits. However, stable traits explain the manifestations of neuroticism in the NCS better than situational characteristics. The results of the study confirm the assumption that changed goals cause the manifestation of traits and states that differ from stable dispositions. The quantitative analysis of adjectives with positive and negative emotional-evaluative meaning showed that in the NCS respondents were 2.57 times more likely to choose attributes with a negative emotional-evaluative meaning compared to the CS, which confirms the hypothesis of the predominance of negative valence of self-representation in the conditions of goal incongruency. The findings indicate that the change in self-representation in the NCS significantly and in the theoretically expected way were associated with a change in goals as a result of change in situational affordances.

Project monitoring and evaluation to engage stakeholders of international development projects for community impact

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the role of project monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in international development (ID) project stakeholders' relationships. This study draws on agency theory to examine the specific role M&E plays in improving ID project impact.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data comprising of in-depth interviews were collected from ID project stakeholders such as project donors, implementing partners and steering committee members.FindingsResults of the study show that project M&E activities can serve multiple purposes including the collection of data for the assessment of inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact. This information is shared with stakeholders to assist in evidence-based decision-making to improve project impact on community. This study shows that M&E activities strengthen the relationship between stakeholders by involving multiple stakeholders at different stages of ID projects to identify community needs and to demonstrate the positive community impact. Agency issues such as goal incongruence, information asymmetry and risk-sharing affect the relationship between the stakeholders. Investing in different M&E activities can reduce these issues, ultimately leading to a positive impact at the community level.Originality/valueThere has been limited research that explores the principal-agent relationship between project stakeholders of ID projects through the lens of agency theory. The role of M&E to collect project data and address agency issues between project stakeholders to improve project impact is the novel contribution of this paper.

Internal legitimacy crises: the roles of the regulatory focus and relational social capital of headquarters and subsidiaries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of how the regulatory foci of the multinational enterprises (MNE) headquarters and the subsidiary lead to internal legitimacy crises. This paper discusses how pragmatic and moral legitimacy crises affect relational social capital.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is conceptual.FindingsThis paper highlights the importance of internal legitimacy as well as the motivational orientations of headquarters and subsidiaries for the functioning of MNEs. Internal legitimacy management is crucial for building relational social capital. This study proposes that legitimacy crises are particularly likely to occur in cases of goal incongruence between headquarters and subsidiaries. This study postulates that organizations with a promotion-oriented institutional logic are concerned by the absence of pragmatic legitimacy processes. In contrast, given their aim of protecting the status quo, prevention-oriented institutional logic MNEs are concerned about the absence of moral legitimacy.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to explore the relationship between regulatory focus, internal legitimacy and relational social capital.

Developing structural modelling of inter-partner factors of international joint ventures performance

PurposeThe study aims to identify, analyse and develop a model for measuring the inter-relationship and interaction among the inter-partner factors. International joint ventures (IJVs) literature has scantly studied the interactions and inter-relationships among the inter-partner factors of IJVs performance. To address this gap, this research creates a hierarchical relationship framework among the inter-partner factors of IJVs performance.Design/methodology/approachThe comprehensive literature review is used to identify the factors and possible relationships between the factors and IJVs performance. M-TISM (modified total interpretive structural modelling) methodology is used to examine the relationship among the factors of IJVs performance.FindingsThis study highlights 12 inter-partner factors that affect IJVs performance. The results suggest that size asymmetry, commitment, goal incongruency, competitive overlap, trust, control, the interdependency of resources, cooperation, economic distance, cultural distance, geographical distance and administrative distance significantly impact IJVs performance. Commitment is found to be a linkage variable as it has high dependence and driving power. Goal incongruency and competitive overlap have high driving power.Research limitations/implicationsThis study gives a proposed list of critical inter-partner factors for policymakers and practitioners to consider when developing rules or recommendations to improve IJVs performance. The focus of policymakers should be on economic and geographical distance, followed by cultural distance, competitive overlap, goal incongruency, size asymmetry and administrative distance to improve inter-relationship among the partners in IJVs. The work contributes to the academician by presenting a modified TISM model that highlights the significance of ambidexterity in driving the performance of IJVs.Originality/valueThis study fills a gap in the literature by analysing the interactions among the inter-partner parameters that influence the performance of IJVs. It offers insights into the variables, such as driver dependence and the relationships between the variables.

Regulatory intermediaries and value conflicts in policy implementation: Religious organizations and life‐and‐death policies in Belgium

AbstractThis article makes important contributions to governance research by studying the implementation of policies with high potential for goal incongruence between intermediaries and regulators. Building on a regulatory intermediation framework and prevailing theories from organizational institutionalism, we propose an original typology that classifies intermediaries' strategies for coping with challenging regulations. Furthermore, we explain the choice of these strategies based on intermediaries' value systems, the degree of interdependency with the regulator, and policy ambiguity. The empirical strategy is based on the case of Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim religious organizations engaged in the implementation of abortion and euthanasia policies in Belgium. These latter constitute a typical case of policy implementation that prompts value conflicts between permissive official regulations and intermediaries' conservative values on life‐and‐death issues.

From Fiduciary Duty to Impact Fidelity: Managerial Compensation in Impact Investing

Investors with standard monetary preferences will give a fund manager incentives to increase firm profits, which can be achieved through a share in profits via carried interest. When investors have social preferences, it is not clear which incentives the manager should receive. We explore this puzzle by applying an agency theory perspective to impact investing, a practice where investors seek both financial returns and a measurable social or environmental impact. Using an inductive, qualitative approach, we identify and describe the ethical tensions and challenges faced by fund managers to structure and implement impact-based variable compensation schemes. Our results indicate that economic incentives tied to non-financial objectives are useful to alleviate goal incongruity between principals and agents during fund creation but have the potential to lead to perverse effects during the fund lifecycle, where managers may exploit subjective non-financial metrics to maximize personal wealth. We introduce the concept of impact fidelity, a conceptual equivalent of fiduciary duty, to ensure that investment decisions reflect the asset owner’s impact preferences.

Expanding the boundaries of buyer-supplier agency problems: Moving from dyad to triad

Extant agency theory addresses dyads consisting of a principal and an agent. It informs us about how to overcome agency problems in the buyer-supplier relationship. In this conceptual paper, we propose a theoretical argument that if we expand the boundary conditions from dyads to triads, we find new solutions to dealing with agency problems. To the buyer-supplier dyad, we add the supplier’s supplier, the buyer’s other supplier, the supplier’s other customer, and the buyer’s customer. As such, we consider four types of triads in supply chains and propose that the buyer as the principal could reframe agency problems with the focal supplier by moving to one of these triads. In particular, we investigate alternative mechanisms that may reduce the level of goal incongruence, information asymmetry, and power asymmetry in the buyer-supplier relationship. Our conceptualization suggests that supply managers should look outside the buyer-supplier dyad for additional opportunities to resolve agency problems.

Challenges for financial inclusion through microfinancing: the goal incongruence between top management and the loan officers

The drift of mission from social orientation to commercial orientation has created issues at the firm level as well as the social level. Foci of the study to explore the reasons for emerging issues in the microfinance field. Mainly through a qualitative approach and from the agency theory standpoint, the study attempt to answer why and how goal incongruences occurred between top management and loan officers. The thematic analysis results reveal that institutional process, agency variables and cost, and personal reasons of loan officers, including self-interest,have contributed to the goal incongruence. Notably, the inability to verify the loan officer’s behaviour and manage bonding cost and monitoring cost at an optimal level due to weaknesses of the internal process can be recognised as the causes for the goal incongruence. In addition, theoretical contribution, implications, and limitation of the research are also considered and discussed.

The Roles of Different Appraisals in Anxiety and Emotional Exhaustion: A Case of NCAA Division I Head Coaches

AbstractThe complex and unpredictable nature of sport competitions causes athletic coaches to experience a substantial amount of anxiety, which can be detrimental to their well-being and performance. Therefore, it is important to identify the psychological process of how coaches manage their anxiety. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between the four different cognitive appraisals, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion among coaches. To accomplish this objective, 203 head coaches in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I were recruited to complete an online questionnaire. The findings indicate that the goal incongruence appraisal positively predicts reported anxiety, whereas the coping efficacy appraisal negatively predicts it. Furthermore, reported anxiety is positively associated with subjective ratings of emotional exhaustion. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the cognitive appraisal process of emotion by demonstrating how different appraisals are associated with anxiety. Additionally, the finding can help coaches use more effective cognitive appraisals to enhance their emotional experience.

Effects of Employee Sickness Presence on Customer Repurchase and Recommendation Intentions: The Role of Customer Affective Reactions

Sickness presence can have important individual and organizational consequences, such as health deterioration or productivity loss. Additional risks, such as negative customer reactions, may be particularly relevant in the service sector. Based on affective events theory and appraisal theories, we hypothesize that employee sickness presence negatively impacts customer repurchase and recommendation intentions. Furthermore, we explore potential affective mechanisms of these effects, including disease avoidance, personal anger, moral outrage, post-consumption guilt, and customer compassion for the employee. We conducted four studies, including three experimental vignette methodology studies (Ns = 227, 72, and 763) and a qualitative study (N = 54). In Study 1, employee sickness presence had negative effects on repurchase and recommendation intentions. Results of Study 2 show that customers experienced disgust, fear, anger, guilt, compassion, and indifference in response to sickness presence. In Study 3, anger explained the negative effects of employee sickness presence on repurchase and recommendation intentions, while appraisals of moral fairness were negatively related to both customer intentions. Finally, in Study 4, disgust and anger explained negative effects, while fear, guilt, and compassion explained positive effects of employee sickness presence on customer intentions. Appraisals of goal incongruence, reduced agency of the customer, and uncertainty were negatively related to customer intentions. The physical absence of the customer in the service encounter (phone call) mitigated the experience of disgust, fear, and anger, whereas it exacerbated feelings of compassion for the ill employee.

Value-based Procurement and Agency Problems in Triadic Healthcare Relationships

This paper adopts an agency theory perspective to analyze a medical devices procurement triad consisting of a centralized purchasing unit, a medical unit of a hospital and an external medical device supplier. Through an in-depth case study of this triad, we examine agency issues and how they hinder the governance of triad-level outcomes i.e., value-based procurement. Our findings contribute to agency theory by positing that each triad member may pursue individual goals creating goal incongruence not as a result of opportunism but rather caused by role-based norms and incentive structures. Furthermore, information asymmetry in triads should be approached as a multilateral phenomenon when all triad members are boundedly rational actors possessing limited information processing capacity and thus suffering from specialized information and hidden (bilateral) actions of the other triad members. Finally, we find social factors such as power asymmetry and institutionalized mindset of unit price myopia to moderate the effects of information asymmetry and goal incongruence on triad-level governance. These factors together appear to curtail moves towards more outcome-based contracts and hence value-based procurement.

Frontline employee anger in response to customer incivility: Antecedents and consequences

This study examines the antecedents and consequences of frontline employee (FLE) anger evoked by customer incivility as well as the moderating effect of emotion regulation. The cognitive appraisal theory provides the theoretical basis for this study. Data were collected from a sample of 296 frontline service employees in four hotels in Guangzhou City, China. The results demonstrate that, while goal incongruence, goal importance, and other-agency positively predicted anger, coping potential negatively influenced anger. Furthermore, the effects of cognitive appraisals on FLE retaliation intention were mediated by anger. Additionally, FLE emotion regulation ability significantly moderated the relationship between anger and retaliation intention. Our findings extend the literature on customer incivility by demonstrating the psychological mechanism underlying how customer incivility triggers FLE retaliation intention. • This study investigates the mechanism of how customer incivility incidents lead to retaliation intention. • Goal incongruence/importance, and other-agency positively predicted anger, and coping potential negatively influenced anger. • The effects of cognitive appraisals on FLE retaliation intention was mediated by anger. • ERA acted as a moderating factor and weakened the relationship between anger and retaliation intention.