Opportunism

About: Opportunism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2030 publications have been published within this topic receiving 97170 citations. The topic is also known as: opportunist.

Managing multichannel coordination in retail banking: the influence of customer participation

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the combining of marketing and organizational literature. This paper seeks to evaluate the relationships between multichannel coordination and customer participation, as seen through the lens of potential customer opportunism. It aims at showing the impact of this opportunism on the organizational design of multiple channels structures.Design/methodology/approach – The research reports on an exploratory case study in a French retail bank. A total of 25 in‐depth interviews were conducted, and the use of other sources enabled data triangulation.Findings – The results show first that an increase in the number of distribution channels is liable to favor customer opportunistic behavior. To counter this, the bank mainly relies on impersonal coordination modes. An emerging result highlights the role of the customer as a “perceptual filter” between the different channels of employees.Research limitations/implications – Customer opportunism is studied via channe...

Signaling in Political Budget Cycles: How Far Are You Willing to Go?

Abstract: A key assumption in the literature on political cycles with rational voters and opportunistic politicians is that opportunism is common knowledge. In this framework, political cycles have been interpreted as a signal of competency. However, if opportunism is not common knowledge, cycles may no longer indicate competency, but rather opportunism. This is because highly opportunistic incumbents are willing to go farther to be reelected. Since political cycles require discretionality to reallocate budget items, a decrease of discretionality curbs cycles. It may also make elections more effective at selecting competent incumbents.

Different Approaches to the Financial Crisis

Abstract: The economic crisis has exposed shortcomings in standard economic theory and provided an impetus for new economic thinking. But the theoretical debate in the wake of the crisis has been unduly constrained by the terms of the mainstream approach to economic theory. Like any approach, it is characterised by a way of framing reality, giving meaning to terms and setting criteria for good argument. It also determines how any economic theory is understood, whether from the history of economic thought or from the contemporary literature. But there are other approaches to economics which would open up the field to a much wider range of possibilities for new economic thinking. Addressing the challenge that any reader bases her understanding on her own approach, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to explain what it means to consider different approaches and why it matters for policy. This is done by discussing two features of the financial crisis which pose particular problems for economic theory. These are the role of changing market sentiment in driving asset prices on the one hand and the breakdown of trust relationships in banking on the other (the moral hazard issue). We will see how these are addressed by mainstream theory and by alternative approaches. First, market sentiment is discussed within the mainstream rational-optimising framework, where risk is quantifiable, and compared with the Keynesian approach based on the general uncertainty of knowledge, where reason, evidence and sentiment are integrated. The moral hazard issue is then discussed in its mainstream form in terms of rational opportunism and in its institutionalist form in terms of the foundation of social relations (including relations between institutions) in trust. It is shown that different ways of approaching theorising in each case imply different policy measures. It is argued further that an exclusively deductive mathematical approach to analysis of market sentiment and trust is unduly limiting and that a more pluralist approach would more fully address the issues.

Transaction Cost Regulation

Abstract: This paper discusses the fundamental underpinnings and some implications of transaction cost regulation (TCR), a framework to analyze the interaction between governments and investors fundamentally, but not exclusively, in utility industries TCR sees regulation as the governance structure of these interactions, and thus, as in standard transaction cost economics, it places emphasis in understanding the nature of the hazards inherent to these interactions The emphasis on transactional hazards requires a microanalytical perspective, where performance assessment is undertaken within the realm of possible institutional alternative In that sense, politics becomes fundamental to understanding regulation as the governance of public / private interactions The paper discusses two fundamental hazards and their organizational implications: governmental and third party opportunism Both interact to make regulatory processes and outcomes more rigid, formalistic, and prone to conflict than envisioned by relational contracting