동태적인 프랜차이징 시스템 환경에서의 가맹점의 기회주의적 행동과 행동의도에 관한 연구 (Franchisees’ Opportunistic Behavior and Intention in a Dynamic Franchising System)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국중소기업학회
· 수록지 정보 : 중소기업연구 / 33권 / 2호 / 151 ~ 172페이지
· 저자명 : 이재훈, 나호섭

초록

본 연구는 프랜차이즈 시스템의 프랜차이저와 프랜차이지의 관계에서 프랜차이지의 기회주의 행동에 영향을 미치는 선행변수에 대해 살펴보고, 기회주의 행동과 그 선행변수들 간의 관계에서 환경 동태성의 조절효과를 분석하였다. 선행연구 고찰을 통해 기회주의 행동과 그 선행변수들 간의 인과관계를 파악하기 위한 연구가설을 설정하였으며, 이에 기반하여 연구모형을 구축하였다. 가설 검증을 위해 국내 프랜차이즈 시스템에 소속되어 있는 831개의 프랜차이즈를 대상으로 설문조사를 실시하여 자료를 수집하였으며, 다중회귀분석을 실시하였다. 분석 결과, 교환관계의 질은 기회주의 행동에 유의적인 부(-)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 집중화 정도와 네트워크 크기는 유의적인 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 기회주의 행동과 그 선행요인들과의 관계에서 환경 동태성의 조절효과를 분석한 결과, 모든 상호작용항이 유의한 부(-)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 결론 부분에서는 연구의 시사점과 한계점 및 향후 연구 방향을 제시한다.

영어초록

Economically operating, a franchise system is being widely recognized as an organizational system that can flexibly respond to a fast-changing business environment. The system is of particular use, in that it could help small businesses with resource constraints to be competitive by providing an opportunity of utilizing outsourcing strategies rather than an integrated structure of firms. In this sense it appears that such a decentralized structure system is greatly attractive to franchisees. Research on the franchise system is based on three theoretical foundations: resource dependence theory, agency theory and transaction cost theory. From the resource dependence perspective, for instance, it is plausible to assume that a franchiser who establishes a new franchise system easily and usefully can attempt to overcome its own resource deficiency by securing a sufficient number of franchisees. This clearly indicates that the franchise system can be beneficial to both of parties.
Literature highlights that the key is to mitigate opportunistic behavior by franchisees for a successful operation of a franchise system. The transaction cost theory provides a sound theoretical explanation of why the success of the franchise system in business relies, to a great extent, on effectively managing the opportunism.
This study explores the nature and characteristics of opportunistic behavior acted by a franchisee and its antecedents and attempts to analyze their causal relationships in a franchise system. Regarding moderators in the linkages between opportunistic behavior and its antecedents, a vast majority of research focuses on how the concept of trust can be well built up to reduce the opportunistic behavior. From this point of view, a particular emphasis is placed on the moderating effects of environmental dynamism between the linkages.
Drawing on relevant literature, six major research hypotheses are developed to empirically clarify the effect of the antecedents on the opportunistic behavior and a conceptual model that illustrates the hypothesized paths is constructed.
H1 : In a franchise system, quality of relations between a franchiser and franchisee will have a negative effect on the propensity to act opportunistically or on opportunistic behavior.
H2 : In a franchise system, firm-specific investment in terms of franchisees will have a negative effect on the propensity to act opportunistically or on opportunistic behavior.
H3 : In a franchise system, the higher the extent of centrality, the greater the possibility of acting with opportunism.
H4 : In a franchise system, network size measured as the number of franchisees will have a positive effect on the propensity to act opportunistically or on opportunistic behavior.
H5 : In a franchise system, dependency will have a negative effect on the propensity to act opportunistically or on opportunistic behavior.
H6 : In a franchise system, environmental dynamism will moderate the relationship between all the antecedents and opportunistic behavior.
To test the hypotheses, data is gathered from a total of 831 franchisees that are identified as operating in domestic franchise systems using questionnaires and multiple regression analyses are run.
Results reveal that quality of relations between a franchiser and franchisee is found to significantly and positively affects opportunistic behavior. This finding indicates that franchisees could seek to avoid acting with opportunism when the franchisees perceive and recognize positively support provided by a franchiser and the franchisees voluntarily cooperate with their franchiser toward a mutual gain. It is also found that the higher the extent of centrality, the greater the possibility of acting with opportunism. In general, centrality tends to go hand in hand with the relatively lower level of opportunism in an organization. In a franchise system, however, it is clear that a franchise's headquarter has a limited level of control over franchisees as it has a form of the horizontal structure due to geographical disperse. Because of this line of reasoning, an attempt to get the level of control high could make franchisees recognize that a franchiser has a lower degree of trust for them, thereby leading to the high extent of opportunism. The results also indicate that network size measured as the number of franchisees has a positive effect on the propensity to act opportunistically in a franchise system. On the contrary, two other independent variables are found to insignificantly affect the consequence.
More importantly, the results of moderated regression analysis show that environmental dynamism is a significant moderating variable in the relationship between all the antecedents of opportunistic behavior suggested in the present study and the consequence. It is also found that the moderator is even significant in the linkage between the dependent variable and two independent variables - firm-specific investment and dependency - which are found to be insignificant in a linear regression analysis. This finding proves that franchisees that operate in a very dynamic business environment have a tendency to be strongly tied to their franchiser.
From these findings, several implications are presented. Since this research would be the first to place emphasis on environmental dynamism as a moderator that is expected to reduce an opportunistic propensity in a franchise system, it broadens the theoretical scope for research into a franchise system. This research also pays attention to the importance of network size in elucidating one of the reasons for opportunistic behavior of franchisees. Results indicate that the size of the network must be taken into careful account so as for a franchisee to avoid acting opportunistically to a significant extent. It provides a managerial implication that the franchise business should be run with the appropriate number of franchisees that a franchiser can take control over effectively. Additionally, the result shows that interaction between firm-specific investment and environmental dynamism plays a significant role in decreasing franchisees' opportunistic behavior. This denotes that, under an intensified dynamic and competitive environment, a franchisee is likely to invest firm-specific assets toward its franchise' policy.
Although it has these contributions and many practical implications, the present study also has some limitations. The analysis depends totally on one-way based data obtained by franchisees, which has the limitation of not reflecting the intention of the franchiser, thereby having room of occurring bias. This suggests that it would be meaningful if further research is conducted with dyadic data. Including the quality of communications and reputation of a franchise, more antecedents of opportunistic behavior need to be taken into consideration to have more robust results. In addition, it should be fruitful to link opportunistic behavior to performance. To perform a more robust test, it would be necessary to take account of other extraneous factors such as the prior business experience of a franchise's founder and ownership types which also could be influential on opportunism of franchisees in the relationship.

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