How to inhibit a partner's strong and weak forms of opportunism: Impacts of network embeddedness and bilateral TSIs

• The effects of firm's TSIs on its partner's opportunism are positive when network embeddedness and partner's TSIs are low.
• The effects of firm's TSIs on its partner's opportunism are negative when network embeddedness and partner's TSIs are high.
• Network embeddedness is more effective in inhibiting weak-form opportunism than strong-form resulting from the firm's TSIs.
• The moderating effect of embeddedness is greater than partner's TSIs on relationship between TSIs and weak opportunism.

This study investigates the moderating effects of a firm's network embeddedness and a partner's transactional specific investments (TSIs) on relationships between the firm's TSIs and its partner's strong- and weak-form opportunism, and compares the efficiency among these moderator variables. The regression results suggest that (1) a firm's TSIs are positively related to partner's opportunism when network embeddedness and the partner's TSIs are relatively low; but (2) a firm's TSIs are negatively related to partner's opportunism when network embeddedness and the partner's TSIs are relatively high. Furthermore (3) network embeddedness is more effective in inhibiting partner's weak-form opportunism than in inhibiting strong-form opportunism resulting from the firm's TSIs. Finally (4) with regard to the relationship between TSIs and weak-form opportunism, the negative moderating effect of network embeddedness is greater than the negative moderating effect of partner's TSIs. This study explains reasons why conflicting views exist about the relationship between TSIs and partner's opportunism, reveals the differences in the moderating effects of network embeddedness and partner's TSIs, and makes new contributions to both transaction cost theory and embeddedness literature. It also provides, for firms involved in TSIs in a buyer–supplier relationship, insightful managerial suggestions about ways to reduce their partner's varying forms of opportunism.