IS

Dawson, Gregory S.

Topic Weight Topic Terms
0.294 contract contracts incentives incentive outsourcing hazard moral contracting agency contractual asymmetry incomplete set cost client
0.148 theory theories theoretical paper new understanding work practical explain empirical contribution phenomenon literature second implications
0.117 information environment provide analysis paper overall better relationships outcomes increasingly useful valuable available increasing greater

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Boudreau, Marie-Claude 1 T.Watson, Richard 1
agency theory 1 information asymmetry 1 information systems consulting 1 opportunism 1
principal-agent relationship 1 screening 1 signaling 1 tacit knowledge 1

Articles (1)

Information Asymmetry in Information Systems Consulting: Toward a Theory of Relationship Constraints. (Journal of Management Information Systems, 2010)
Authors: Abstract:
    Opportunism, or self-interest seeking with guile, is often witnessed in human behavior, and it bedevils human interactions and relationships. Organizations expend considerable effort to reduce opportunism. Agency theory espouses formal contracts as effective constraints on opportunism; however, a consultant's use of tacit knowledge subjects clients to information asymmetry that is not amenable to formal contracts. The principal-professional lens was developed to accommodate the presence of tacit knowledge, but it ignores formal contracts and, like agency theory, ignores the existence of principal opportunism. This examination of information systems (IS) consulting notes that when information asymmetry is present, both clients and consultants sometimes behave opportunistically. The level of information asymmetry, the type of knowledge, and the level of contract specificity in an IS consulting engagement determine the mixture of legal and social constraints that are efficacious. Based on these revelations and the inadequacy of other theories, a theoretical model of relationship constraints is developed to explain the interplay between signaling and screening, knowledge type, contract specificity, and the levels of information asymmetry in predicting adopted constraint mechanisms. For researchers, this new model offers a lens to study opportunism from a knowledge-based perspective, whereas for practitioners it offers the possibility of forestalling a decline in markets due to rampant opportunism.