Bargaining over Relational Capital
Todd Zenger (Olin Business School, United States)

The relational assets that emerge through exchange are jointly owned, and thus the rents that accrue to these assets may be subject to bargaining. We examine this bargaining or distribution process in the context of buyer-supplier relations. We take the perspective of a focal buyer and explore how its portfolio of relationships defines the returns to relational capital that can be claimed by suppliers. We show how, against a backdrop of uncertainty, the buyer¹s choices of current suppliers shape both the potential future returns and its ability to capture these returns. We analyze this process empirically by examining the procurement activities of a large, diversified manufacturing company and find patterns in the data that are consistent with our predictions about how both sellers and the buyer behave as they jockey to both create and capture returns from relationships.

Keywords:  relational capital, buyer-supplier relationships, value appropriation, procurement, portfolio of relationships

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An Accidental Paradox of Bosses? Work Satisfaction of “Autonomy-Preferrers” in Entrepreneurial Teams.
Chih-Mao Hsieh (University of Amsterdam)

One of the best-known accepted facts of entrepreneurship in the management and labor economics literatures is that people often become entrepreneurs in order to “be their own boss.”  Indeed, statistics show that most entrepreneurship proceeds via singleton entrepreneurs. Yet, research argues and evidences that the most successful entrepreneurship takes place in teams.  Given the benefits of joining a team full of the entrepreneurially-minded, why might so many entrepreneurs shy away from them?  We hypothesize that greater preference for (individual) autonomy among a team’s members leaves everybody sensitive to—and susceptible to—work conflict, which reduces satisfaction.  If too many “autonomy preferrers” can sabotage entrepreneurial satisfaction, then one key attribute that distinguishes the entrepreneurial personality is actually at risk of preventing successful entrepreneurship.  Results are expected from a pilot study of entrepreneurial student teams, where different facets of autonomy (independence versus freedom), conflict (task conflict versus relationship conflict), and satisfaction (with the job, versus with the team) are disentangled, and their interplay examined.